Ideas for Homemade Christmas Ornaments

You can take a pipe cleaner and cut it in half. The kids put on alternating red and while tri beads, bend down the top, and it comes out looking like a candy cane. (Tri beads have 3 points, you can google it if you don't know) They are cheap and available at all craft stores.

My daughter and I always made cinnamon/applesauce ornaments. THey are easy, cut them out with cookie cutters, place a hole for the ribbon and they smell great!!

get styrofoam balls and cout them in glue and roll them in glitter..stick a small eye hook in the top of them and attach an ornament hook.

cut out christmas shapes out of construction paper..let the kids decorate them , laminate them and poke a hole in the top and tie a ribbon thru it!

cinnamon dough ornaments for the older kids - try the recipe on the Mc Cormick/Schiling web site (just cinnamon and applesauce - smells awesome! http://www.mccormick.com/Recipes/Other/Cinnamon-Ornaments...) or the one on http://crafts.kaboose.com/cinnamon-dough-ornaments.html that uses a bit of white glue might hold together better. You could have the older kids cut them with cookie cutters, or if you cut and dry them yourselves, glitter glue works well as a decorating medium - here's some that I made: http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x232/chanjung4/craft%2...

For the younger ones - you could get some craft foam and have them decorate with star stickers, or use the foamies ornament kits that are no doubt already in stock at JoAnn or Michaels. Also Oriental Trading Co. has scratch-art ornaments that the little kids could decorate easily.

Well, I've done where you take a plastic spoon and put some glue in the actual spoon part and then sprinkle some glitter, then tie a bow at the end of it.

We've also made candy cane reindeer where you take a pipe cleaner, cut it in 1/2, wrap one 1/2 around the hook of the candy cane, then take the other 1/2 of the pipe cleaner and cut it into 1/2 again (1/4's) and then wrap each of them around the ends of the ends of the cleaner already wrapped on the candy cane. Then get some tiny googly eyes and a tiny red pompom and glue them on for faces. We just put ours back in the candy cane holders and then bubble wrapped them and they got to our troops safe & sound.

Use popsicle sticks to make snowflakes and let the kids decorate them with paint and glitter. Or you could do pipe-cleaners with beads. If you get various sizes of the same type of beads, and thread them large to small, they make pretty icicles.

I used either foam ornament kids or precut, predrawn wooden ornaments from S&S,Oriental Trading, or Hobby Lobby. They won't break like the ceramic, dough, plaster, and glass ones do.

At any craft store they should have a section of plain (thin) wood objects. During the off seasons its anything from frogs & cats, to apples & oranges. During the holidays they usually have bells, reindeer, santa clauses, etc.
It would be fun to get a bunch of those and paint them however they wanted, or you could stick felt to them, pipecleaners, pom-poms, glitter, etc. It would be small and ship well. The adults could punch the hole and string the ribbon through. If you do it, have the kids write a message on the un-decorated side. You could do the same thing with foam sheets, just pre-cut the shapes for them, or have the 11 year olds help cut the shapes.
When I was in girl scouts one Christmas we all made wreaths for our parents. All it was, was a medal ring you buy at craft stores, and pieces of fabric in holiday patterns tied on it. They just cut the fabric into strips and then we tied it on, all the way around the circle, and hung two pine cones by a ribbon from the middle. Ours was the largest ring you could get, but you could easily get smaller ones, and replace the pine cones with jingle bells.
Ok this is the last one I can think of. My mom used to get cinnamon sticks, hot glue three of them together (2 on the bottom side by side, then one on top of those) and tie a Christmas-y ribbon around it, attack a holly leaf and those little read berry looking things (the fake ones) and hang them around the house and on the tree. It made the whole house smell like cinnamon and they don't go bad. You just have to occasionally rub them to waken the cinnamon smell. Might be nice to send them a smell of the holiday.
Have fun!!!

I prefer items that ship flat and ship well...styrofoam projects break up on those long treks. Start this one by collecting old Christmas cards from the families sending kids in:

Picture or Personal Photo Christmas Ornaments:

This is a fun Christmas ornament that is easy to make and fun for all ages. To get started, you will need to collect several small plastic lids. Pringle lids and lids from small tubs of butter both work well. Let your child go through magazines or your old Christmas cards to find pictures that they like. Carefully trace the lid around the picture and cut it out. Glue the picture on the inside of the lid and punch a hole for a string or ribbon. Cut out 2 pictures/photo and decorate the back too. You can also have the children draw or color a picture or blessing or prayer for a personalized ornament then add glitter, beads or sequins around the edges.

I have my daycare kids make an ornament every year for their parents and I've found some really cute, but easy and inexpensive kits at orientaltrading.com. They have a bunch that will ship well, like foam ornaments, but that can also easily be modified for the younger kids. Good luck!

last year at Thanksgiving we had a Christmas craft for my son and my sil son both 3 yr old. She had cut out a Christmas tree out of green felt and then the boys would glue on beads or sequence, then we'd sew a piece of embroidery floss to hang it up. The other thing we did was she had cut red stocking shaped items out of felt and cut slits along the side and the boys had to thread a ribbon through the slits and we just one end longer to hang it up.

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells jingle all teh way...

Cut toilet paper rolls in half, paint them red or green (or cover with foil) and hang jingle bells from them...

Use the cup portion of the egg carton again paint or foil and hang a jingle bell in the middle...

Make a cardboard ring frame with back and (which is painted red, green, gold sparkles etc. ) glue clear plastic wrap (stretch it itght) to th frame front which is then placed over a picture glued to a to the back of the frame... Picture can be a scene cut out from a card or a drawing by the child etc...

Our paper stores have fie cuts you can use to cut out large shapes. Then they can be decorated with glue, pen, glitter!
When I was little we made a lot of ornaments out of foam balls and fabric. Use a nail file to push the edges of little pieces of fabric into the ball. The looked like quilts when they were done.