Star of Bethlehem Wood Craft

This last Sunday was the second week of Nativity, and so for my little Sunday school class, I brought another fun craft to go along with our nativity lesson.

This week I wanted to do a Star of Bethlehem craft, I wanted something that would be easy for the children, and not have too many complicated instructions.  So I decided to make use of the wood tree trunk slices that we made from last years Christmas tree, and with a paper star, some mod podge and fine glitter came up with this craft.

I got out my ruler, and came up with a star pattern that would fit on the trunk circle, traced it out onto yellow cardstock and cut them out with an exacto knife.

Using a sponge style paint brush, spread a layer of mod podge (glossy variety) over the surface of the wood, set the yellow star in the center, cover it with another layer of mod podge, sprinkle on some fine gold glitter (I prefer Martha Stewart glitter, it is much finer than the classic sort of glitter, and works well with this type of craft, as long as the glitter is a tiny fine size it should work), after the glitter is sprinkled on, add another layer of mod podge to help distribute the glitter over the surface.  Let it dry for about fifteen to twenty minutes, then give it one more coat of mod podge.  Then let it dry overnight.  

The surface is nice and shiny, with specks of glitter.  The kids really enjoyed spreading on the mod podge, and swirling on the glitter.  They enjoyed the novelty of working with wood instead of our standard paper.  The big chunky wood pieces are fun to hold, and when they see the star they will remember our story.  This wooden round craft makes a nice paper weight or decoration to tuck into some greenery.  If you had thinner pieces you could also drill a hole through the top and hang them on the tree.

We had fun reading through some of the various Nativity books I have collected over the years, this week I brought in two little pop up books that all the children enjoyed looking through, as well as a newer book I found a few years ago, that has a built in music button as well as stars that light up and twinkle which was a fun surprise when I was done reading the story.   

For a special treat I brought a big bag of Satsuma Mandarin oranges for snack time and some cookies, the mandarin oranges were sweet and the kids enjoyed them quite a bit. It was an all around fun week in Sunday school, and I look forward to more Christmas crafting over the next two weeks.