No kidding, but now's the time to start your Christmas shopping

For example, you want to give your niece a copy of one of your favorite children's books (or the entire collectors' edition of Harry Potter). Make sure you've signed up for weekly offers from book retailers. The large retailers, like Barnes and Noble, often offer 30 percent or 40 percent off coupons. If you're going to give a lot of books for gifts, it pays to start early and take advantage of the discounts. Christmas in July sales: Some retailers offer sales in July to get shoppers thinking about the holidays. Last year, Toys 'R' Us had in-store sales as well as a Cyber Monday, similar to the deals stores offer the Monday after Thanksgiving. The retailer also used the July event to kick off its Christmas Savers program, which offered shoppers a cash incentive to put money on a savings card to use later. Summer clearance sales: Local and national retailers will start discounting goods by the end of July to make room for back-to-school and fall items. For example, REI's summer sale ends July 4. The sporting goods retailer and others tend to have another sale near the end of the season. Start paying attention to what the hiker, biker or camper on your holiday list says he needs this summer and pick it up during the sales.

Crafts for Christmas do not Have To Be Complicated ... - Crafts Kids

Christmas is a holiday where all kinds of kids crafts are created at home and in the school environment.

Crafts for kids, however should be an activity that should bring fun and excitement to children’s activities aside from adding a bonding to the adults that are doing the projects with them.

Educational arts and crafts is a way of doing crafts with children where they are not blindly copying the adults model but are creating things that they are capable of creating at their own developmental level.

When children create at their own level a number of things occur.

It creates a great feeling about themselves, as who can feel good about crafts projects that are copycat models of someone else’s. Having a crafts project done by the kids without following the adults model makes children feel capable and good about themselves.

Creativity is also a wonderful reason to switch to educational arts and crafts. There is the cafeteria style that allows children to choose materials to work with, there is process only art where the process is what counts along with a few more.

The point of it is that all of the crafts under educational arts and crafts should be age appropriate, and allow for freedom of creation and expression.

Below I will give you 2 clear cut, almost effortless Christmas craft ornaments that you can make.

The first one uses plastic throwaway cups:

Let the children take permanent markers in many colors and decorate their cups. Encouraging the children to color all over the cup will make for a nicer ornament.

When they are done, take a cookie sheet and put the cups upside down on it and put in the over at around 350 degrees. Allow them to stay in for a few minutes as they melt. These cups are flammable so be very careful how long you have them in the oven. Keep the kids quite a distance from the hot cups and tray until they cool down.

When they are cool, make a hole in the center and use colorful ribbon to hang as an ornament for your tree.

Another project is to take all of your old cd’s and dvd’s and use them for the project.

In anutshell: Have the children add all sorts of decorative touches and them hang them with string.

The possibilities that can be used to decorate the cd’s are endless.

You can color with permanent markers, glue and glitter them, collage over them, decoupage over them, and decorate them with whatever shiny, decorative materials you can find.

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