Type a Story - Reading, Spelling, and Creativity

I can't take credit for this activity, because my daughter L (3 years old) came up with it almost all on her own.  My girls typed up sentences (with some help), printed them out, cut out the words, glued the words back together in the correct order on another piece of paper and illustrated their stories.  If you want to see the final results, read on...

Art Activity: "stained glass" lanterns

Here is a project I was planning for Christmas/Hanukkah, which slipped through the cracks, so we finally got to it just now.  I bought a bunch of plastic mason-style jars which we used for various gifts, and wanted to try making colorful lanterns out of them.  We used a mix of equal parts Elmer's glue and water to create a substance similar to Modge-Podge, which we spread all over the outside of the jars.  Then we stuck on pre-cut squares of colored tissue paper, followed by more glue.

It was messy (note all the glue on the table), but easy for the girls to do with very little direction.  The tissue paper strips don't have to line up perfectly - in fact, the overlapping creates a very neat effect.  Once these were dry, we put little battery-powered tea lights (which I got at a discount after Halloween):

Then we went into the closet to check them out in the dark... Pretty cool!

If I were to do this craft again, I would put the tissue paper on the inside of the jars so they look really pretty and shiny from the outside, or finish them with some type of glossy clear-coat.