Making Christmas Crackers

Our second holiday craft project for the vacation (be sure to check out tiny gift boxes made from greeting cards, if you missed it) is Christmas crackers!

This is our newest favorite holiday tradition! Tomorrow we will put one on each plate set out for the Christmas meal, so that everyone can have the fun of pulling their crackers and then wearing their paper crowns at dinner.

Here are the instructions from Diane in Denmark, plus my photos and tips.

Zac and my mom are in the kitchen doing holiday baking (pumpkin pie, apple crisp, pecan pie squares) and I am making the Christmas crackers!

Here are the supplies:

cardboard tubes (whole and half), snaps, paper crowns, jokes

tape, curling ribbon, wrapping paper scraps, knife, scissors, treats

You can use toilet paper tubes for this (this bamboo toilet paper has nice sturdy white tubes) but they don't hold as many treats, so I've been using the cardboard tubes that curling ribbon comes on. They are lovely and fat.

toilet paper tube (top)
curling ribbon tube (bottom)

I made six crackers today.

(The half tubes are just for shaping the crackers; they aren't consumed.)

You can use all kinds of treats to fill your crackers. Paper crowns and jokes are traditional. We also like to put in lots of candies. I usually do a big shop at TJ Maxx or HomeGoods and go through their holiday food aisles and look for everything that is in individual packaging. Each cracker only holds about 6 candies, so we definitely over-shop.

Tip #1: Taste all the candies in advance! (I think this is Zac's favorite part.) One time we got a fancy Limoncello candy that was extremely nasty.

Tip #2: This craft is a lovely use of large-ish wrapping paper scraps. The paper needs to be wide enough to fit all the way around your center tube, and long enough for your center tube and the two half tubes plus a bit more.

To fit my tubes today, I used pieces that were about 9 inches x 15 inches.

Once you have your wrapping paper cut, get your remaining supplies ready. First, tape the snap (if using) into your center tube.

Then add the paper crown, Christmas joke, and little treats!

Now lay the center tube onto your wrapping paper, with a half tube carefully in place on either side, and tape the wrapping paper to the center tube only. That's because you'll be removing the half tubes later.

Next, roll the wrapping paper in place around all the tubes and tape it in place (for this, put tape on the wrapping paper that is around the center tube as well as the half tubes). Now, before you slither out the half tubes, you'll want to scrunch the wrapping paper a bit right there at the joins.

That is to prepare it for the ribbon, which will be coming in just a moment.

Now tie the ribbon tightly in place.

Tip #3: Don't place the ribbon too close to the end of the tube, or it will tear on the stiff cardboard edge when you pull it tight.

Tip #4: Before tying a knot in the ribbon, slip the half tube out a bit and check to see that the hole is not too big still. It will feel tight but may not be tight. And if it's not tight, beware. We had a sneaky lemon drop slip out!

You want it to look like this:

Now do the same with the other end, curl the ends of your ribbon, and step back and enjoy the results of your handiwork!

These are really fun and easy to do, and you can make them for all sorts of holidays and celebrations, including Valentine's Day, Easter, and birthdays!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Common Garter Snake

There are many fascinating snakes in the world; we are looking at two.

On Thursday we learned about the Prairie Rattlesnake by reading Patulous, the Prairie Rattlesnake by Jonathan Kahn. Jonathan wrote and illustrated this national award-winning book when he was just nine years old!

Today our topic is the Common Garter Snake. Here is what we are doing:

Winter, Awake!
by Linda Kroll



Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Cold
by Joyce Sidman
"Snake's Lullaby," pp.8-9



The Animal Book: A Visual Encyclopedia of Life on Earth
"Snakes," pp.150-153
19 snakes, including garter snake, shown to scale with a 57 inch child



All Creation Waits
by Gayle Boss
chapter 15

I have a complete blog post listing all of the wintering animals covered in All Creation Waits. This is an extraordinary book, and works well as a classroom read aloud if you live in the temperate forest biome of North America (we do not read the final chapter, which is very religious). Each day in December, as we read about an animal at snack, we hang up the ornament of that animal. It's a lovely tradition!

Here are all the Advent Tree Photos.

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

The Gyrator and the Weather Tree

Zac and I are celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with a gift or special activity each day.

In the morning he reads the riddle that I write and put in the middle of the ring, and uses the clues to find a hidden present or note about what we are doing. As the years go by, the riddles have gotten harder and harder!

Yesterday he got to make a lantern, and in the evening we got together with friends and did a Lantern Walk and a Solstice Spiral. It was a beautiful night, and a favorite way to celebrate the cycle of the seasons.

He made the lantern using the instructions I typed up a few years back: What Do You Do with Old Birthday Candles?

It was quick and came out really well. Then when we lit the candle inside, we discovered that the wings glowed in the light!

I got lots of other ideas on that Lantern Walk as well. One friend adhered dried Autumn leaves to the outside of her lantern, over the tissue paper base, and it was beautiful! Another covered her jar in salt, which sparkled!

I just love to see all the little lights bobbing along as people walk through the nighttime forest!

This year we also celebrated the Winter Solstice by visiting the Gyrator sculpture (behind Giant City Lodge) for the first time. I was so excited! This sculpture has a circular cutout through which the sun's rays pass at solar noon (here are the times for Makanda IL). On the Equinoxes and Solstices, the beam of light lands perfectly on a bronze plaque on the ground.

There also a ring at the top of the sculpture, through which you can always see the North Star.

http://www.vectortheartoffabricating.com/1990-gyrator-by-stephen-luecking/

The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper

I had been wanting to go for years, ever since my friend Trish told me about it, and this year we finally did! The Gyrator would make a great field trip for the next time I teach about Astronomy.

There are a few more special seasonal traditions I'm looking forward to! On New Year's Eve, we do ceromancy with the Fortune-Telling with Wax - New Year's Activity Kit from A Toy Garden. It's really fun to pour the melted wax in cold water and see the shape it takes as it hardens. Is it a mushroom? Is it a bird? Then you use the little booklet to decode your future.

https://atoygarden.com/products/fortune-telling-with-wax-new-years-activity-kit

On New Year's Day, we set up the Weather Tree (PDF) from All Year Round: A Calendar of Celebrations. We did this for the first time back in 2007! In the past we have always done the little kid version of this, where we colored in a leaf based on the weather (snow, rain, sun, etc).

Fun Fact: If you miss a day, timeanddate.com has historical data!

But now that Zac is in Third Grade, and Measurement is our big Math focus, I think I'd like to do it with Temperature.

Reading a thermometer is the hardest of all the measurement tools, since each one can have a different scale. That's not true with clocks or rulers! So it takes a TON of practice.

It would be super easy to check the temperature every day at noon (we do that anyway, before we go out to recess!) and have the color key represent ranges of numbers instead. That would help the third graders practice reading a thermometer; a different child could be in charge of it each day.

There are seven leaves in the key, so we could have seven temperature colors, and then just leave it white if it's below freezing.

32 or lower - white
33-39 - silver
40-49 - purple
50-59 - blue
60-69 - green
70-79 - yellow
80-89 - orange
90 or higher - red

I could also write the actual temperature in my plan book each day, so that we could then find the average temperature for each month. When I student taught at the Campus School of Smith College, Mrs. Szymaszek kept a list of the daily temps and the children calculated the average every month and graphed it. In Waldorf, finding averages (mean, median, mode, and range) is part of the 6th grade Business Math block... as is making and reading a graph. So that could be a special job for the older children!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Favorite Jokes for Christmas Crackers

This year Zac and I are embarking on a brand-new holiday tradition: making homemade Christmas crackers!

Some videos that helped me when I was learning how:

DIY Easy Christmas Crackers
Hannah Weir

2-minute craft! British Christmas Crackers
Diane in Denmark

What's inside a Christmas cracker? Let's see!
Simple English Videos

If you -- like I -- were taught to save EVERYTHING as a child, you'll be happy to know that this is a lovely use of long bits of extra wrapping paper!

First we bought the snaps and tissue paper hats.

Next we went to HomeGoods to buy fancy individually wrapped candies. Then it was time to write up some jokes! This post goes well with Jokes for Reluctant Readers and Jokes for Reluctant Readers: Valentine Edition.

Here are some jokes that are especially suitable for putting in a Christmas cracker:

Who hides in the bakery at Christmas?
A mince spy.

How much did Santa pay for his sleigh?
Nothing. It was on the house.

What goes, "Oh, oh, oh"?
Santa walking backwards.

Why can't Christmas trees knit?
Because they lose their needles.

Why was the candy cane so expensive?
It was in mint condition.

What do you get if you cross an apple with a Christmas tree?
A pineapple.

What was the snowman doing in the vegetable patch?
Picking his nose.

What falls at the North Pole but never gets hurt?
Snow.

What do you call an old snowman?
Water.

What do you call a penguin in the Sahara desert?
Lost.

Where do snowmen keep their money?
In the snowbank.

Where do snowmen go to dance?
Snowballs.

How did Mary and Joseph know Jesus's weight when he was born?
They had a weigh in a manger.

How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizzas?
Deep pan, crisp and even.

The Christmas sweater I got last year kept picking up static electricity. So I took it back and exchanged it for another one -- free of charge.

A gingerbread man went to the doctor's office complaining of a sore knee. "A sore knee?" the doctor said. "Have you tried icing it?"

I got a universal remote for Christmas. This changes everything.

I bought my mom a fridge for Christmas. I can't wait to see her face light up whens she opens it.

I have this incredible ability to predict what's inside a wrapped present. It's a gift.

You can also buy lovely printable Christmas cracker jokes on Etsy. I like the red set and green set (three pages of jokes in each set). $7.94 well spent!

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Booktacular Pumpkin Decorating Contest

Every year we participate in the Booktacular Pumpkin Decorating Contest at the Carbondale Public Library. It's so fun to hear what book characters children love best! Today they each got their pumpkins, chose their book characters, made a planning sketch, and turned in a supply list to me (younger children had the assistance of older children to scribe for them).

Now I am looking over all of the supply requests and seeing what I need to purchase!

Sorting Hat from

medium brown, dark brown, black, and white paint
brown witch's hat
clothespin

Dragon from

red paint
black and white pompoms
red paint chips
scissors & glue

Paddington Bear from

green, brown, and black paint
brown fur fabric
needle & thread
large hat
red ribbon
paper egg carton
scissors & glue

Tag from

dark brown and grey paint
metallic gold paper
orange construction paper
scissors & glue

Cat from

red, white, and black paint
red and white construction paper
scissors & tape

Narwhal from

light blue, grey, and black paint

Polly from

light peach, red, black, yellow, and green paint
hair ribbon

Eragon from

blue paint
metallic black paper
aluminum foil
blue and silver colored pencils
cardboard
scissors & tape
brown wool roving

Fireheart from

light green, dark green, medium green, white, pink, and black paint
orange construction paper
scissors & tape
black wire

Golem from

white, black, and blue paint
grey wool yarn
gold bracelet
white paper
pencil
scissors & glue

Saphira from

white, light blue metallic, and dark blue metallic paint
light blue, medium blue, and dark blue yarn
metallic black paper
blue construction paper
black Sharpie
scissors & glue

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!