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  Christmas is a time of year that most children don't need help getting excited about, yet a Christmas craft to add to the holiday festivities doesn't hurt in helping to enhance the Christmas spirit. Get your middle school students or children together to create useful and festive Christmas crafts.
  
  

Glass Ball Ornaments

• Show the middle schoolers how to decorate glass ball ornaments to take home and adorn the Christmas tree. Give each student a package of clear glass ball ornaments. Usually you can purchase the ornaments at the craft store in four packs. Give them acrylic paint, craft glue, glitter, self-adhesive rhinestones and other similar items for decorating their ornaments. The students can place a few drops of paint inside an ornament and swirl them around to create a marbled ornament. Another idea is to coat the outside of an ornament with craft paint before rolling it around on a plate of glitter to create a glitter-coated ball ornament. Self-adhesive rhinestones stuck to the outside of an ornament in a fun design combined with a bow of ribbon tied around the top of the ornament make for a fun tree embellishment. The possibilities are almost endless so that each student is able to create ornaments that match his personality and display his personal tastes.
  
  

Christmas T-Shirts

• Get the students together to create fun Christmas T-shirts to wear to a Christmas party or as they party in their pajamas on Christmas Eve. Give each child green fabric paint and a foam brush. Have her paint a Christmas tree on the front of the shirt. The tree should be large enough to take up most of the front of the shirt. Show the students how to hand-sew buttons and beads onto the Christmas trees to make up ornaments, lights and the star on the top of the tree. They may use square buttons to place gifts beneath the tree on their shirts. Write a Christmas-themed saying across the shirt with fabric puff paints. Allow the shirts to dry for 24 hours before wearing or washing them.
  
  

Wrapping Paper

• One inexpensive yet useful Christmas craft that middle schoolers can make is hand-decorated wrapping paper. Give the students a few ideas on how they can begin to transform sheets of brown packaging paper, usually used to wrap items for shipping, into lovely wrapping paper for concealing Christmas gifts. Provide foam stamps, acrylic paint, fine-tip permanent marks in a variety of colors, stencils, stickers and even candy wrappers for the students to use in decorating the paper.