Sugar and Spice & Break Out the Dice!

One of my favorite parts of the holidays is creating homemade ornaments. My kids

and I get crafty every year and our tree shows off every single homemade ornament!

One of their all-time favorite projects (and mine, too) is making salt dough ornaments with cinnamon. Salt dough ornaments are such fun to make and adding cinnamon takes it to another level. Your house smells delicious and just like Christmas!

My kids love breaking out the cookie cutters and painting every single ornament. Each ornament is different and shows their personalities AND they are so easy to make! You can see a blog post of mine with the recipe that we used here. Making salt ornaments is a fun, most likely chaotic, project to do in the classroom.

I wanted to share a sweet DIY ornament idea! It uses cinnamon salt dough to create a cinnamon scented ornament. The ornaments below were made from a hand shaped cookie cutter, with a heart cut out of the middle. This cookie cutter reminds me of the book, "The Kissing Hand," by Audrey Penn. We wanted the hand use sign language to communicate love, so we pushed down two of the fingers to create the sign for "I love you".  Such a precious gift.

Don't have a cookie cutter shaped like a hand? No problem, trace each child's hand on foam or construction paper and let them glue or tape down the fingers. They can paint, color, or decorate this ornament, too! Parents would love this memento of their child's hand!

Before I share a quick dice game, I wanted to share a few of my favorite homemade ornaments collected and made over the years. This beautiful ornament came home with my son in kindergarten. His handprint cupped the bottom of the ornament and each finger became a snowman. It came with the special poem you can see in the picture.

I made a collage of some of favorite ornaments off the tree. The reindeer at the bottom is an ornament I made when I was a kid! A LONG TIME AGO!!!

My son begged me for some sports themed ornaments this year, so we came up with basketballs and footballs! You can see my blog post here with DIY directions.

Thanks for checking out my cinnamon salt dough fun! Now, I have some dice games that you can use to get kids playing and learning this month.

"Roll, Say, Keep" is always a favorite. It is easy to play, but still engaging and fun. I love that you can change the cards that children use to customize specific skills for each individual child. I play "Roll, Say, Keep" with my kindergartener and 3rd grader at the same time. The each choose cards from a separate pile, so they are working on their specific needs. I've had my one working on numeral recognition and the other with multiplication, but both at the same time. Talk about multitasking!

I wanted to share a FREE version of Roll, Say, Keep with you! Head over to my TPT store to pick up this game. Kids will identify numerals 0-30, while the characters from the Gingerbread Boy run through the cards.

I had multiple requests for an editable version, so that teachers and parents can customize for the specific skills needed. You can get my Editable version of "Gingerbread Roll, Say, Keep" here. Need one that is not holiday related? Check out the Editable Winter Edition or Editable Superhero Edition.

If you are looking for some more gingerbread activities, head over to my blog to read about gingerbread scavenger hunts and grab some FREE focus wands, too!

Thanks for checking out my holiday fun today! Hope you enjoyed the cinnamon infused ornaments and the easy dice games! Have wonderful holidays! Head over to my blog TODAY to enter a giveaway for the 12 Days Of Christmas!