Hey, howdy, hey! It’s the 2nd Friday of the month which means it’s Impress Your *Sponsored* Kids time! We take this day each month to write our sponsored kids (we have two from Compassion and one from World Vision) and make a fun flat craft to send along as well.

This month, I wanted to make flowers. You know, April showers bring May flowers? I saw these cute tissue-paper-contact-paper flowers on Pinterest & pinned it to my Flat Crafts For Sponsored Kids Board. The original post turned these flowers into a beautiful bouquet. I thought with some bright paper they’d make cute and easy suncatchers. Alas, as I tried to cut them into flower shapes, I just could NOT do it!

See?! That flower looks like a bear!

Let’s step away from those and get ready to make some CUTE suncatchers!

All you need is a roll of clear Contact Paperand some leftover tissue paper (I save it at every birthday party!).

Then, it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1. Cut out a big piece of clear contact paper and lay it down sticky side up.

2. Cut (or rip) bunch of tiny squares of tissue paper. Mine are about 1/2-1 inch but you could do any size. Let the kids stick on the contact paper!

3. Slap on another piece of contact paper, press tightly and you’re done. Easy peasy!

Now you can make shapes. I like the heart best. And the cross looks pretty good, too. And yes, I finally eked out a decent flower.

Then, I punched a hole in the top and strung a little yarn through the top. And hopefully our sweet kiddos can find a place to hang them and see something pretty in their home!

Now it’s your turn to impress your sponsored kids:

CHALLENGE: Make these suncatchers for your sponsored kids! If you do, let me know by leaving a comment here or updating on our Facebook page. Let’s spur each other on and make our sponsored kids super happy!

NON-CRAFTY CHALLENGE: If you don’t have time or resources to make these suncatchers, grab some fun local postcards and send those with your letter. We’ve been collecting postcards on our Summer O’Fun {is that title too weird?} so our sponsored kids can see what we’ve seen! You can also find local city or state postcards at WalMart and some Hallmarks!

Who’s writing their sponsored child today?

Don’t sponsor a child yet? Look at these faces and sponsor one today with Compassion International or World Vision!

Linked to TidyMom, Amy’s Finer Things and I Can Teach My Child.

***Impress Your Kids has some new digs at ohAmanda.com! Come visit us there for all the Impress Your Kids archives and all our new posts–including our Easter newsblast with fabulous tips for celebrating a meaningful Easter with your kids!***

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Can I be honest? This week of INCREDIBLE LOVE has been hard for me. I’ve wanted to lash out at my kids, roll my eyes and breathe heavy aggravated sighs at almost everything they do. Today I had a few minutes before lunch and was planning on doing this activity with them but I was so incredibly tired of interacting with them, of correcting them and leading them.

How incredibly UN-loving am I being if I can’t even do a LOVE craft with them? So, I swallowed my pride (aggravation? sin?) and grabbed a Bible, my computer and the kids.

First I turned on Seeds’ Greatest Commandment song and the kids had a dance party! (Ooh, look! I just found a LIVE video of the song!) This song is from Mark 12:30-31 and is Jesus quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and more…

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.

So, if we want to be super, not only do we need to love God with all of us, we need to love others the same way we love ourselves. I asked the kids if they loved themselves. And I’m happy to report Lydia hugged herself and said, “I looove myself!” We talked about how we know we love ourselves because we eat food we like, read books we like and do the things that we want to do!

This was an easy thought to switch over to loving others. How can we love our friends and family like we love ourselves? To help us figure this out, we made this paper heart garland and wrote our “neighbors” on the hearts. As we made each heart and wrote each name we talked about how we could love that person (sharing with someone from church, obeying our teachers, etc).

Now. The garland. It’s easy peasy.

Grab some construction paper and cut it into 1″ strips. (I do hope you have a paper cutter!) Take two strips and staple it at the bottom.

Fold the top two ends to the middle to make  a heart! But don’t staple it yet!

 We’re going to stick the next two pieces of paper in.

Once the second heart has been made, staple both hearts together.

Continue this until it’s as long a you like! It was a great activity to do together–one could hold it, one could put the strips of paper in and the other could staple. Then everyone can write friends names on it!

The kids absolutely loved thinking of all their friends and writing their names down. And I’m glad I worked at loving my most important neighbors–my children and did this activity with them. It softened my hard heart and helped me show them an example of incredible love (well, as incredible as I can muster!).

We only got to do two INCREDIBLE LOVE activities this week, but tomorrow I’ve got a round-up of some other fun LOVE books, music, Scriptures, crafts and activity ideas. You’ll love it!

Don’t forget to grab your free Super Hero badges!

***Impress Your Kids has some new digs at ohAmanda.com! Come visit us there for all the Impress Your Kids archives and all our new posts–including our Easter newsblast with fabulous tips for celebrating a meaningful Easter with your kids!***

Thank you! THANK YOU! I am totally giddy with excitement about how well received Truth in the Tinsel has been! I hope you’ve bought the book and joined the Facebook page. It is going to be SO fun to do this whole advent-ure together!

I have literally been GLUED to my computer since the release of Truth in the Tinsel. Reading about all the fun advent calendars and cool ideas you’ve come up with to do with Truth in the Tinsel has made me in full Christmas mode! I’m thinkin’ the rest of the year Impress Your Kids will be devoted to Christmas. Will that be ok? (Seriously, I feel like I might start dressing in red and green from now on!)

Today, Lydia came home with the most fun ornament! I love Lydia’s teachers because they are always sending extra fun things home to do with the kids–we always get papers about fun food crafts and even songs and fingerplays. This would be a fun gift or just a fun activity to do with your kiddos!

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All you need is a clear glass ball ornament, about 1 teaspoon of popcorn kernels and a paper bag. Take the top off the ornament and fill the ornament with about 1 teaspoon of popcorn. Put the ornament inside the paper bag and fold down. Put bag in microwave for 1-3 minutes (ours took about 2.5 minutes).

Take it out of the microwave and…

Is that not the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?! The kids thought it was magic. Wonder if you could do it with colored popcorn? That would be fun!

Do you have a fun handmade ornament to share? Leave a link in the comments!

linked to Show & Tell, Too-Cute Tuesday and Take a Look Tuesday

***Impress Your Kids has some new digs at ohAmanda.com! Come visit us there for all the Impress Your Kids archives and all our new posts–including our Easter newsblast with fabulous tips for celebrating a meaningful Easter with your kids!***