Happy Second Week of Advent! For this week’s craft my students made their own miniature Saint Nicholas!
St. Nick’s Day is December 6 and there are plenty of ways to celebrate with your little ones. The most popular way you may have heard of is setting your shoes out for St. Nicholas to leave candy in. I’ve been doing this the last two years with my students, and of course they love it. I think having class with no shoes on is the most entertaining part for them, but when they find that St. Nicholas (or a fellow teacher) has left candy canes or chocolate coins in their shoes, it’s an added bonus.
A new activity we tried this year was making this St. Nicholas figure. You can get the printout here -much thanks to stnicholascenter.org and Catholic Icing for this one. It’s absolutely adorable!
I noticed when I printed it out that it was not recommended for young elementary students, but I do love a challenge.
This was not very challenging, though. I had the kids color their St. Nicholas and his various accessories (a staff and bag of gold) first. Then I cut out the smaller parts for them, while they cut out St. Nick.
Next, you have to roll St. Nick into his charming cone shape. Adults should do this part, as it’s the most challenging part for little hands. You can use either tape or a glue stick to keep him together.
After that, I just helped the students glue the accessories to St. Nick’s hands and showed them how to glue his arms on. Some students needed more assistance with this than others, but all in all the craft went quite smoothly!
Once they’d finished putting their St. Nicholas together, I let them decorate him with glitter glue. This was definitely their favorite part.
I thought this craft turned out so well and was a great way to celebrate St. Nicholas Day! My kindergarten students seemed to enjoy it as well- especially the boys who discovered when they threw their St. Nicks in the air they became the equivalent of paper airplanes…
The Crafty Catechist 