It's that time of year again when you can involve your class in all sorts of great art and craft activities to make your classroom look amazing and then please all the Mum's and Dad's by sending home some wonderful home made decorations for the festive season.

I have made these Christmas Paper Baubles from gold, silver and black paper before, but here they are shown using patterned wrapping paper, any combination of papers will look great and you can make them to a coloured theme if you want to. For a simple card Christmas Bauble, try these photo Baubles, which may be especially fun to look at when they are bought out in the coming years to put on the tree.

Watch this clear video with a picture film, with music sound track, of how to make a 3D Christmas tree. For older children use this more complicated 3D Origami Christmas tree. You could show the film on the interactive whiteboard and keep pausing it, until everyone is ready for the next section.

These cup snowmen look quite cool, but I think you would need to work out how best to do the hat melting part (which requries putting cups in the oven), depending on your children and school equipment. I would have to melt them at home first. For a more straight forward Snowman try these ones made from paper plates.

A great whole class decoration is this handprint wreath, that combines the handprints of each child in one large decoration. For instructions for a traditional Christmas paper lantern, scroll down a little on this page. Or for that traditional favourite of tissue paper stained glass window decorations find the instructions here.

Try just one of these idea and your classroom will look great!

There are so many different spelllings for Hanukkah (Chanukah), and no one seems to know which one is officially correct! Anyway,  if you or the children in your class celebrate this Jewish festival, then have a look at these cards, which are all suitable to attempt in the classroom.

For older Key Stage 2 children Enchanted learning have a great Star of David card, which requires very few materials, but looks really effective. This fold out Menorah card design can be customised and personalised quite easily. Look at this clear instruction video for a Star of David wreath or lollipop stick decoration or a handprint Menorah card. This site has clear picture instructions for a chunky Chanukah candle or try this Pop up Dreidel card.

Happy Hanukkah!

Youtube and other video websites are fast becoming great places to look for ideas for making things. However, you can end up watching quite a bit of unsuitable content first if you are trying to find something instructional and suitable for showing to children. So to save you wasting time and watching a lot of unsuitable content, here are some great videos with instructions for Christmas cards for the class to make, some videos suitable for showing direct to children or some that will give you ideas that you can take and then teach yourself.

Apples4theteacher have uploaded this video of a great Rudolph reindeer card, which is clear and easy to follow. If you like 3D cards, try this Christmas Tree card. The instructions are visual and clear, but set to music, with no verbal instructions and are suitable for older children as the card requires the use of a craft knife. Another card, this time suitable for all primary children, with music background and visual instructions is this pop up Snowman in Christmas Trees card which is really straightforward to make. Fast forward the adverts to get to the clear instructions for this  Pop up Snowman, which has clear spoken instructions or this easy Christmas Present card, an instruction video which you could show straight to the children. 

Whichever one you chose, children all love to make cards at this time of year and their parents and grandparents love to receive a hand made card.

Easter Sunday is on Sunday 24th April this year and whether you want activities for your children at home or in the classroom there are loads of free ones around to download and print or use on the computer. You need fast mouse skills to collect moving Easter eggs to save the chickens from being eaten by a fox in this interactive game. Test your memory skills in this memory match Easter game.

Try that age old tradition of decorating Easter eggs online, paint with patterns, or drag and drop letters to write on them. Here is a great printable Easter story workbook suitable for retelling the Easter story, an Easter egg collecting game to download and print and also an Easter wordsearch.

For young children to use on the computer you can download this Easter themed counting game. Also for very young children try this range of Easter themed worksheets and printables. Easter colouring pages can be found here and here.

Let your children find out how Easter is celebrated in loads of different countries around the world. For a whole range of Easter printables including an Easter numberline, number formation cards, an Easter Egg Hunt for the interactive whiteboard and Easter Bunny counting cards try these great resources from Communication4All.

In the United Kingdom Mothering Sunday will be on 3rd April this year, as it is always the fourth Sunday in Lent. It is traditional in many schools for the children to make either a card or a small gift for the children to present to their Mum's.  I really like this 'Chore card' which is a flowerpot filled with seperate card flowers, with each flower having a different chore the child promises to do on the reverse, bringing home the message that children should be helping out their parents. Using the same theme of flowers in a pot you could try this pop up flowers card, which links nicely to objectives in the QCA Moving Pictures unit. Along the theme of helping out Mum, children can type out and print a set of coupons or vouchers, which entitle Mum to the services of the child to complete the jobs they have put on the vouchers. This same site also has a whole range of printables, including cards, bookmarks, worksheets and themed writing paper.

If you would like to make a gift there are loads of ideas here, that include a woven paper basket, tissue paper flowers or a flowerpot pen holder. You can find some simple worksheet style activities for very small children, including a mother and baby matching activity, badges, frames and simple card printables here, at My Chalkface.

For and easy to understand explanation of what Mother's Day is in Britain, use the Woodlands website, which is aimed at primary age children, and if you register with TES you can download a free powerpoint from their resources section for use in the classroom on the interactive whiteboard.

National Storytelling week starts on 29th January 2011. There are lots of resources available for use in the classroom for use on the interactive whiteboard and to support visual literacy and get your children telling stories.

Children in KS1 can watch a treasure chest being washed ashore in this simple visual story starter with an accompanying onscreen vocabulary bank. Or try this slightly longer one called 'The Missing Apples' in the groovy garden,  which has a longer slightly more complex introduction that gives children a story to complete. Both of these could be used for children to continue as a whole class story telling session.

For a wide range of video clips for story starters that have been compiled under different headings try these visual literacy video clips. If you would like to get your children writing stories online then try this range of story starters where they can make choices under a range of different story types to compile their own story, saving that 'I don't know where to start' feeling.

Teachers TV offers a selection of dramatic story starter video clips, probably best suited to KS2, there are seven on one fifteen minute downloadable video or another nine on different themes on a seperate download. These range from a piglet exploring a barn to a girl looking around a spooky basement and provide a good varied selection to get a storytelling or writing session going.

Or for very young children try this whiteboard activity to create different characters to put into a story.