Let it snow :: making snowflakes

Not long to Christmas Day now, it's certainly well into the hot sub-tropical summer where I live but those Northern hemisphere traditions of fir trees, snow and sleigh bells prevail.  My son's class at school were busy in the final weeks of school making paper snowflakes and covering them in glitter to decorate their classroom, and while I have to say they looked a bit out of place in the heat, they were pretty.  Plus they got the kids pretty excited at the patterns they were making when they opened up their folded and cut paper.

Maybe your kids would like to make some too?  You only need to grab a few sheets of paper from your home office printer and square them up and you're ready for a quick and satisfying activity that no matter how hard you try its pretty hard to make a bad one or mess them up (glitter is absolutely not required if you don't want to go there in the mess department).  If your kids are old enough to wield a pair of scissors by themselves then they can make (and hang!) a few on their own which would give you at least thirty minutes to "get something done".  Goodness knows we're all making lists and checking them twice this time of year!

And ho!  Making his crafty debut on this blog is my seven year old son, Alexander and his instructions for making snowflakes.  

Here he goes (instructions left to right, top to bottom):

1. take a square of paper (we used 21 x 21 cms)
2. fold it diagonally into a triangle
3. fold it again down the middle to make a smaller triangle
4. take one corner bring it over enough to make a fold down the centre

5.  take the other corner and fold it towards the centre so that it wraps around the fold you just made

6.  cut off the two sticking out points so that the bottom edge of your folded paper is straight

7.  cut small shapes out of the two long edges of your folded triangle.  Little curves and triangles are good,          using pinking shears would also give some rather cool effects

8.  carefully unfold your triangle and you have...

...a snowflake!

I put little holes in the top of our snowflakes and hung them at the window with a couple of mini reindeer, a snowflake-reindeer bunting of sorts.  It's hard to photograph against the light coming in the window but it looks really great, plus they blow around gently and dance in the warm midday breeze and are guaranteed not to melt :: a win win.

Happy snowflake making.