Never boring: Handmade holiday

The greeting cards hung on the bulletin board with care . . .

This craft has become a holiday tradition in our classroom, and it is an easy, inexpensive, and safe way to give children the experience of creating block printed cards.

All year, I (and dutiful family members) save Styrofoam leftover containers so that children may transform them into beautiful handmade prints.

Remove the sides so that only the smooth flat surface from the lid remains

and then trim to desired print size.

We create a design on paper first. Any design changes will need to be made before it is transferred to your foam block or plate. Simple shapes work best in the foam. Each year, we brainstorm a list of winter symbols. However, the children are welcome to choose any design they wish. Remember that if you use letters or words, they will need to be printed backwards.

When you are satisfied with your design, tape your paper over a piece of foam the same size. Carefully trace over your design, pressing your design through the paper into the foam (without cutting through the foam). For children, I often suggest they use a colored pencil for this task so that they can easily identify areas of their design that they have not yet transferred to the foam. Montessori children may need to be reminded that this is not a pin-punching activity.

We transform a sunny corner of our classroom into a printing station (covered in butcher paper), with a brayer, ink (we use Speedball water-soluble block printing ink), a plate on which to roll the ink onto the brayer (cut from a sheet of plexiglass that was randomly left in my classroom one year by district repairmen), colored construction paper cut and folded for cards, and a clothesline drying area on the bulletin board.

Each child also removes one wet wipe from the box at the start of printing so that it is handy for cleaning ink from fingers in between prints. Roll the brayer through the ink so that it is evenly distributed on the cylinder.

Roll the brayer in both directions to spread the ink evenly over your design plate.