After the kids have pulled out and played with every new toy or Christmas gift, they may turn to you and say, "Mom, I’m bored." At this point, you peek at the calendar, realizing we have several more days until school starts back up. Here are a few fun crafts using some basic supplies that the kids and you can do to help get through those days, whether they happen right away or toward the end of winter break.

All of these crafts will require the following:
*Construction or similar paper
*Scissors
*Glue, stapler and/or tape
*Crayons, markers and/or paint

Picture of my daughter making the Winter Wonderland Window. She loves pink so that was the color she picked for her window frame.

Melissa Boehling | Contributor

Paper Snowflakes
I have to be quite honest — for some reason, I had trouble remembering all the steps of how we created paper snowflakes so many years ago. Mine, lately, seem to resemble fancy cut squares, not the true snowflakes I had remembered. However it hadn’t taken more than some paper, scissors and folding.

So I found a few websites and realized there are so many varieties depending on what you want for your end result.

Below are some of the websites I wanted to share. They vary between simple and complicated designs; you can choose which ones to try based on the age group you are making snowflakes with:
http://www.highhopes.com/snowflakes.html
http://www.papersnowflakes.com/instructions.htm - This one even includes templates you can print out
http://www.kinderart.com/seasons/dec7.shtml - Also includes templates
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/christmas/snowflake/ - Nice and straight forward instructions. This website is very geared towards children.

Winter Wonderland Windows

Materials:
*white, off-white or a light blue paper (this will make up our window pane's color)
*black paper (or other color for making the window frame)
*glitter (optional)

Steps:
1) Have the children draw and color their own winter scene of sledding, snowman building, etc.
2) If you have or want to, you can then help the children do a light dusting of glitter over the picture. Use a paint brush to put a light coating of glue and then shake the glitter on. After it's on, just shake the glitter back off into either the garbage or a container to keep and use again.
3) Cut out one long stripe and one shorter one to put over the picture to make the picture frame.

Melissa Boehling, Owner and primary care provider for Starry Night Child Care, IT Consultant, and Mother of four (Twin sons in Heaven, a seven year old son and a four year old daughter.)