A Perfect Christmas Craft

For 8-11 year old girls, activities need to have an "active" element. Usually (not always) that means some kind of craft or take home that is tied to the main lesson element.

Surprisingly, for someone who does so many of them, I actually consider myself NOT a craft person.

To start with, I'm one of those people that really dislikes clutter. While adorable for the first week or so, crafts (especially MULTIPLE crafts) quickly become overwhelming. I felt guilty for throwing away my child's artistic expressions. Yet I also felt annoyed having my home overtaken by misshapen clay dragons and finger paintings and dream catchers. Sigh.

To sum up, my main reasons for avoiding "over crafting" are:

1. Crafts can get very expensive. Making ONE may cost less than a dollar, but you usually are making 8-12.

2. You don't always get a lot of bang for your buck: that $1-$2 (per girl) craft may have been fun to make, but at some point (sometimes shortly after arriving home that very same night) that green bean can decorated with scrapbooking paper and repurposed as a pencil holder is likely going to be pitched in the trash. Crafts should not be too sizable a chunk of your budget or you are literally throwing your budget money away.

3. Crafts are not usually useful. They are decorative. So those paper plate flowers in a hand painted vase you made for Mother's Day? Kept as a token of love, but not actually GOOD for anything.

4. Crafts are meant to be displayed. The girls are PROUD of the things they make. Yet, like me, not every parent is ready to decorate their home in tissue paper flowers or yarn dream catchers. You put those parents in a tough position if the girls come home with pipe cleaner creations on a monthly basis.

5. Crafts accumulate. Even for the parents that don't mind them, and the girls who love them, they pile up. We make something almost each time we meet. Even without school projects, and Primary lesson handouts, and so forth, that is 24 "little reminders", "tokens", "wall hangings", etc. per YEAR. If the girls kept everything they made (and it just gets worse in YW when they meet every week) they would soon not be able to walk in their rooms, or see an inch of wall space, or have any room on top of their bedside tables or dressers. Craft overload is a real thing!

Therefore, while I love a fun little craft to give the girls that "something extra" to remind them of the lesson at home, I have my own set of craft guidelines:

1. Crafts need to be inexpensive.
2. Projects for others (Mother's Day/Father's Day) are most appreciated if they are MEANT to be disposable (like, say, have an edible element).
3. The crafts the girls make will NOT look like the picture on Pinterest. Have realistic expectations.
4. Most crafts will be thrown away, so the lesson, not the craft, is what needs to be excellent.

With all that in mind I found a craft I loved for Christmas. The felt nativity!

What I loved about it:

1. Felt is cheap.
2. Hand stitching made the craft take a good amount of time-- and was a good skill for the girls to practice.
3. There are several ways to display this: you can add a cord and use it as a Christmas tree decoration. It can stand on a table. It can be placed inside a picture frame.

We have about 12 girls in our group and it's a very young group. We needed all 3 leaders helping to thread needles, tie knots, and so forth. We played Christmas music while we sewed and chatted and it was a lovely, very relaxed couple of evenings. It took us two 90 minute activities to assemble, stitch and wrap this project, which was a gift from the girls to their parents.

THE LESSON: 
Prior to making this craft, we talked about how the girls enjoy RECEIVING gifts, but that at some point we also need to realize the joy of giving. We talked about some of the things parents do for children on a daily basis, and things that the girls could do to be helpers at home, and make their homes more loving and peaceful. (FIG, Developing Talents, bullet point #7) We also talked about how Christ was the first gift of Christmas, and that the season would not exist without the gift of His love. We then watched a couple different videos from LDS.org and read the Christmas story from Luke to get us in a Christmas-y mood! At the end of the videos and stories we talked about how it is more blessed to give than to receive, and talked about how nice it will be to give a really loving gift to our parents. Then we started this craft. The girls were VERY excited to make something for their parents!

The videos we watched were:
~ What Shall We Give, featuring the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "What Shall We Give to the Babe in the Manger?" (approx. 5 minutes)

~ The Reason Behind Christmas (approx. 4 minutes)

~ He is the Gift (approx. 3 minutes)

Craft notes:

~ I pre-cut all the elements of the craft (printable template is linked here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9ltWADMnsx7T0tXV3hLcmFLS28/view?usp=sharing).
The girls took each pre-cut element and glued/taped it in place, then stitched it down.

~ Little pieces of scotch tape worked great to keep the different things in place while we were sewing. We tried glue, but that was not very successful.

~ The finished size was about 6x8 inches-- A large ornament, but a nice sized wall hanging or shelf display.

~ Make sure to stitch all the way around the star, even though part of it is not on the stable. It looks much nicer that way.

~ Make sure each girl puts her name on the back of the craft as, obviously, they all looked very similar.

You will need:

• dark brown felt (1 piece per girl; outer stable, manger)
• light brown felt (1 piece per girl, inner stable)
• flesh colored felt (3 small circles per girl, 1 piece was enough for our whole group)
• yellow felt (1 star per girl; 1 piece covered everyone)
• red felt (1 heart per girl, 1 piece covered everyone)
• green felt (1 Joseph per girl, 2 pieces covered everyone)
• blue felt (1 Mary per girl, 2 pieces covered everyone)
• orange felt (1 baby Jesus per girl, 1 piece covered everyone)
• MATCHING/COORDINATING THREAD (or embroidery floss) for all colors except flesh and the light brown inner stable; the blue or green thread can be used for the eyes. You don't stitch around the faces, they are too small. The eye stitches hold on the faces.
• wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, and boxes or padded envelopes to wrap the completed project in.
• IF YOU HAVE EXTRA TIME: you can also bring markers and plain paper and have the girls write a note of love and appreciation to their parents to include with the gift. We did have time for this and the girls liked making very decorated, fancy notes. :)

The wrapping paper, ribbon and bows were a perfect and festive finish to our project! The girls were very excited to wrap their gift, so don't skip that part!