Free printable New Year's Eve party decorations, New Year crafts, games, lessons | Examiner.com

Planning a New Year's Eve or New Year's Day party? Are you finding it hard to keep kids happily productive and as you prepare for the party? Why not involve children in the holiday decoration making? Here are free printable New Year crafts, party decorations, games and activities. For the most economical printing, set your printer to "draft" and "black ink cartridge only." Printing activities in black and white turns them into coloring pages which kids can color--value added! You can save lots of money on printing ink and still get a nice quality print-out.

Making Friends is a charming website offering free printable paper crafts, templates, patterns and craft activity how-to guides for children. Print New Year's Eve party decorations that kids can make. Make party noisemakers, party hats, banners, a time capsule and journal covers. There's even a make-your-own New Year's Eve ball craft project.

Apples 4 the Teacher is a great website for parents, teachers, homeschoolers, librarians and activity coordinators. Apples 4 the Teacher has free printable New Year lesson plans and worksheets for students. Print New Year's Day crafts, calendars, games, word searches, jigsaw puzzles, history activities, coloring pages, trivia games and party decorations. Homeschool families might use these for New Year's Day lesson plans. Teachers, print New Year worksheets for fun back-to-school activities after winter vacation.

Free Kids Crafts has a whole page of links for free printable New Year's Eve party decorations, crafts, games, lessons and activities for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day parties. Free Kids Crafts also has an interactive calendar that is updated daily with a new craft for the day. You can access the archived crafts for days past, also. This is definitely a craft website to bookmark and check daily.

The Toymaker has two free printable vintage New Year paper craft activities for kids to color, cut and paste. There is a free printable New Year resolutions penny box to make. Children can use it as a piggy bank and practice the value of saving. There is a also a New Year booklet to print, assemble and read together.

Disney Family is an excellent resource for free printable Disney crafts, games, greeting cards, party decorations and activities for any holiday. The New Year activities are listed under Winter printables. There are New Year's Day coloring pages and holiday decorations to print, color and assemble. For more fun with printables for holidays, visit Free Printable Holiday.

Free printable Christmas crafts stencils, holiday patterns, seasonal templates for art lesson plans

Inexpensive Christmas crafts are pretty cool. But guess what's even neater? Free Christmas crafts. For those of you who like free holiday stuff, here's a Santa-sized sleighful of free printable Christmas stencils, seasonal templates and holiday patterns. Print free stencils and make your own greeting cards, wrapping paper and Christmas crafts. To use make reusable holiday patterns and seasonal templates, laminate stencils and then cut them out. You can also transfer printables onto recycled cardboard, such as cereal boxes and cut them out with an X-acto knife. You might also transfer patterns onto recycled sheet plastic or Myler stencil plastic available at Hobby Lobby, Jo-Anne Fabrics, Michael's (but recycled is cheaper!)

Fashion Era has free printable Christmas crafts stencils with seasonal templates for religious and secular holiday patterns. Templates are arranged in a countdown to Christmas Advent calendar, one pattern per day. There are stencils for nativity (birth of Jesus), winter and general holiday patterns. Free printable stencils include reindeer, stockings, manger scene, wreath, holly and ivy, winter scene, snowman, ornaments, Merry Christmas banner,candles, presents, Mary and Joseph, Baby Jesus, bells, carolers, teddy bear, Christmas pudding, Christmas trees, angels, wisemen, Santa Claus and more. The art is nostalgic Dickensian England Christmas.

There's another page of free printable holiday patterns and stencils for another Christmas countdown. Seasonal templates include Jewish Chanukah menorah, Christian Madonna and Child, candle, camel, wisemen, star, a holiday choo-choo train, snowflake, dove, stocking with toys, wreath, Christmas tree, rose and for Easter and Christmas, a lamb and cross. About Painting offers links for many more free printable Christmas crafts stencils, holiday patterns and seasonal templates. Print a gingerbread man, patterns for snowflakes, ornaments, Santa Claus, Father Christmas and more. Christmas printables has even more Christmas stencil printables. Altogether Christmas features free stencils of animals dressed in Christmas-y outfits, like a cat in a Santa Claus hat! 

Free printable Bible Christmas nativity scenes, Advent manger scene

Are you looking for religious Bible Christmas crafts for children to make during Advent? You'll want these free printable nativity scenes. Children can color Bible characters and assemble an Advent manger scene. Here's a free printable Bible Christmas manger scene with cut and paste coloring pages to put on paper towel tubes. Catholic Icing has eight coloring pages that you can click and print directly from her blog. Each page features Mary and Joseph, donkey, angel, wisemen, shepherds, Baby Jesus, camels. Download the set from the website.

Hart of the Mountain has free printable nativity scenes with Bible character finger puppets. Activity Village offers free printable Bible Christmas nativity scenes that kids can color, cut out and assemble. Make a shoebox diorama stable. Scroll down for more manger scene crafts including a nativity mobile. words cards, and games.

Prudent Baby is a blog with a complete set of free Advent manger scene printables. Cute Bible characters people these nativity scenes. Love to Know has free printouts of Bible Christmas nativity scenes to color, cut and paste and assemble. Scrapbook Scrapbook has a darling free printable Advent manger scene with Mary, Joseph, Jesus, angels, animals, wisemen and shepherds. There's even a printable stable and manger.

To celebrate a Bible Christmas, allow children to color and make one character each day before the holiday as a way to count down to Christmas. This makes and excellent Advent devotional. Add a piece each night or move Mary and Joseph closer to the stable nightly. Save the Magi camels for Epiphany season. Have kids color while reading Advent calendar Bible stories. I suggest adding manger scene pieces in this order: stable, palm tree, manger, hay, cow, star, shepherd, sheep, angel, donkey, Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus, 3 wisemen, camel.

Free printable Jesse Tree ornaments and Bible coloring pages for Advent

Advent is the Catholic Christmas liturgical season leading up to Christmas. For four weeks, we pray, fast, read Bible passages on the gospel Christmas story and give alms to the poor. The theme of Advent is to prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus. One way is to pray an Advent calendar. Another, related to the Advent calendar is to follow a Jesse Tree.

The Jesse Tree is an ancient visual aid the shows the lineage of Jesus. The basis comes from the Old Testament Bible passage "a root shall spring up from the stump of Jesse's lineage." This Bible foretells the birth of the Messiah and that He will come through Jesse, King David's father. . During Advent, symbols are hung on the Jesse Tree to represent Bible characters and people in Jesus's family tree.

Here are free printable Jesse Tree devotional activities. Each night, have children color one symbol place it on the Jesse Tree. Do this as you light candles on the Advent wreath and candles and read and pray from the Advent calendar. The Jesse Tree ends by adding images from the O Antiphons, another ancient Advent to Christmas series of prayers.

Life Your Way has a set of free printable Jesse Tree ornaments with Biblical symbols. ERIERCD has several pages of Jesse Tree coloring pages to print free. Print in black and white and have kids color. Jesse Tree ornaments include apple tree (Adam and Eve). Ark and rainbow (Noah), tent (Abraham), cradle (Sarah), coat (Joseph), stone tablets (Moses), Harp (David), ladder (Jacob), tambourine (Miriam), crown (Solomon), anchor (Ruth) lion and lamb (Isaiah), mallet (Deborah), trumpet (Joshua), lion (Daniel), well (Rebecca), house (Elizabeth), lily (Mary) hammer (St. Joseph) Chi Ro (Jesus). The Reformed Church in America has more free printable Jesse Tree symbols to color. Catholic Icing has more printable Advent Jesse tree crafts. 1+1+1=1 has a free printable Jesse Tree booklet with devotions, prayers and crafts to make.

The Jesse Tree can be made in many ways. In times past, it was a Christmas tree. Some families use a tree made of paper or a cloth banner with detachable ornaments. In our family I use a small table top tree with child-made ornaments and symbols. We add one each day.

Free printable totem pole crafts, Thanksgiving Native American Indian lessons for fall, Thanksgiving

 When I was six, my father, mother and I moved to Haines, Alaska. We lived with a clan of the Tlinget Native American Indians. I was adopted into the tribe and my Tlinget name is Dok-du-Yik. I totally enjoyed the cultural immersion experience. I fondly remember the various Pacific Northwest native designs, especially the Totem poles.

Totem poles are an important part of Pacific Northwest American Indian tribes like the Tlinget. and Chilkat that I lived with and also the Kwakiutl, Haida and Tsimshian. Autumn always reminds me of them. As a teacher and homeschool parent, I explored Native American culture in fall units. Here are free printable totem pole design templates.

http://www.papertotempoles.com/ Paper Totem Poles  is a bright, colorful website devoted to the making of totem pole designs. This site is full of historical information about Native American Indians, cultural details and information on religious observations of which the totem pole plays an important part. This website is loaded with free printable Native American Indian totem poles designs, templates, how-to-draw, images and explanation. Teachers, parents and homeschoolers will find not only many great free printable totem pole crafts, but information about the totem pole. This resource will be very helpful to the teacher planning a unit on native American Indian culture.

To make a paper totem pole craft with students, print paper totem pole templates and have kids color them. Then they can glue the colored pictures on recycled cardboard paper towel tubes.

The arrangement and order of the animals on the totem pole is important in Native American Indian culture. The animals form a hierarchy. The animals also represent the guiding spirits of each native clan or tribe. http://www.papertotempoles.com/ teaches students how to arrange animal images on the totem pole. While animals are important totem pole elements, Paper Totem Pole has other categories of native designs: celestial, birds, spirit, people, water, elements and insects. Please enjoy your exploration of Native American Indians; I have more happy memories of my time in the Tlinget tribes than I could ever relate in words.