Cute and EASY Christmas Craft

We're working our way through our Christmas/Holidays Around the World Unit at school (sorry I didn't get it cleaned up enough to share yet, but there's always next year!). It's a fun unit where we study two different countries each day and learn about their traditional winter celebrations. We also practice map skills by color-coding and labeling each place we're studying. It's so nice to break the routine of reading workshop a little bit in our last full week of school, but the activities are still structured enough to keep us busy. :) In the end, students take home a bound book with all of their activities to share with their families over break. I love it!

We've also been making ornaments each afternoon. Each third grade teacher is in charge of one craft and we rotate students every day. We'll wrap the ornaments next week and send them home so students can give them as gifts. This year, I'm making a cute little candy cane mouse with my kiddos.They look great in all colors. Mine last year was purple with a pink nose and ears, but this year I went with traditional Christmas colors. 

I've also used the shiny/sparkle noses instead of the plain fuzzy ones. You can also use two different colors for the ears by gluing round pieces of felt on top. You really can't go wrong. The hardest part is convincing the kids not to eat their candy canes. =)

I get 13-14 mouse bodies out of one large piece of foam and about 12 ears for each piece of craft felt so the craft is really cheap to make too. This year I precut all the pieces because student scissors aren't so great on this material, but I could stack and cut several at a time so it didn't take me too long. They just end up being so cute!

We have three days next week, but they'll be a little chaotic due to practicing for our animal Christmas show. Third grade is planning a "Winter Wonderland" for Monday morning, so I'll be back to share about all of that and my holidays recipes (as requested on my Facebook page) this weekend.

Have a great Friday, teacher friends!