Christmas Teacher Appreciation: Personalized Ornaments

No doubt, Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love all of the lights, the colors, and the smells. It’s also a great time to show the people that you love how much you care about them by giving little gifts. Personally, I always prefer a gift that has meaning over a store bought gift.

About three years ago, as part of my gift to my team members, my wife and I started making a “Bible Studies For Life: Kids” ornament. I have loved this tradition. Each year, my wife will scour the pins of Pinterest looking for a cute ornament idea and this year I think she hit it out of the ballpark.

She found this great “pinecone” ornament made from pieces of paper. We decided that a great way to personalize it would be to use pages of our kids activity pages. Each member of my amazing team works on the activity pages, so these ornaments will have meaning for each of my team.

First, you need to purchase the supplies from a local craft store. We bought all of our supplies at Hobby Lobby.

 

Supplies:

1. Birch Leaf Paper Punch
2. White Styrofoam Eggs
3. Nickel Satin Pins
4. Extra Fine Glass-head Pins
5. Red Ribbon
6. Extra Pages from the curriculum your teachers use (Note: Use old curriculum, not what they are currently using)

Directions:

1. Use the Birch Leaf Paper Punch to punch lots of little leaves from the pages of the curriculum. LOTS of little leaves.
2. With the Nickel Satin Pins, attach individual leaves to the egg in rows. Start with the skinny end of the egg, with the leaves face down.
3. Apply as many rows as you want. The closer the rows the fuller your “pinecone” will be.
4. When you have completely covered the egg with paper leaves, attach a hanger of ribbon by making a loop and attaching it with a Glass Head Pin. My wife made a little bow for ours.
5. We recently had my team to our house for lunch and we placed the ornaments on our Christmas tree in our kitchen, and we let team members choose the ornament of their choice.

Enjoy!