Cotton Ball Snowman

by Kelly D.

Cotton ball snowmen are a great craft for children among the ages of 5-8 because you can make it as simple or creative as you want. You can make a basic snowman picture, or you can make a whole Christmas scene. If you can succeed in getting your children's imagination going, then you open up a whole world of possibilities; not just for this craft or this holiday, but all crafts and all holidays!

what you need:

cotton balls
construction paper
glue (cheap liquid glue is fine)
scissors (dull children's scissors are fine)
glitter and small paintbrush (optional)

what to do:

Take a piece of construction paper in a color you (or the child) like for the scenes' background color. To make constructing the snowman easier, you might want to draw it's general shape on the paper ahead of time. All you need are 3 circles (in order from biggest to smallest, smallest being on top) stacked one atop the other. You can make your snowman as big or as small as you want, but if you want to make a scene around the snowman, you might want to make it smaller (to make room for scenery) then if you're doing just the snowman. Now, fill in the circles with cotton by dabbing a bit of glue onto the paper (inside the circle of course) and stick a cotton ball to the dab of glue. Continue until you have a cottony snowman on the paper.

This is where your creativity comes in. You can either put just a face (and maybe some arms) on the snowman, or you can make a Christmas scene to go with it. Start out by cutting out very small black circles to serve as little pieces of coal for the snowman's eyes and mouth, and a small orange triangle for the carrot nose. You can cut out small brown strips for twig arms, a black top hat (made from 2 black rectangles) and anything else you want to dress your snowman in. You can go even farther by cutting out green paper trees. This is where the glitter comes in. You can draw thin lines of glue across the trees, sprinkle glitter onto the glue (don't forget to turn the paper over and tap it gently to knock off the excess glitter) and it makes lovely garland strings for the trees. You can also take colored sequins and glue them to the tree as ornaments.

The great part about this craft is that if you make the trees for the scene and provide your kids with glue, glitter and sequins or metallic confetti, they can decorate Christmas trees all on their own. I can't imagine a better way to get a child into the Christmas spirit then decorating a Christmas tree, even if it is only 5 or 6 inches tall and made out of paper.

About the Author-
Kelly D. is a staff writer and site editor for HolidaysDot.com.