This is the collection of items I gave to my Sunday School children for their Christmas gift bag.
I’m calling this “Loose Parts Play: Christmas Gift Edition” as I have posted other ‘loose parts’ gift bags I put together for them in the last couple of years. The idea is the same: give items that invite open-ended play and crafting with an emphasis on natural materials as much as possible. I also try to make sure everything is bundled in a way that even the yarn or string is long enough to use. They all love the small bags of items tucked inside with unwrapped larger items and they carefully peek inside to see what treasures these little packages hold.
In Hobby Lobby back in November while visiting family in eastern Pennsylvania, I was looking for regular green pipe cleaners for another Christmas craft project and saw these flexible ‘pine branch’ strands which I brought home to add my collection of craft items. The texture change from the soft fabrics, felt and yarn is an interesting tactile experience and allows for a whole range of craft or play. I cut the flannel with my pinking shears to give a nice decorative edge and prevent easy fraying. I know these seem like pedantic details. I was trying to eliminate common frustrations and failures when working with basic materials.
In the end, I used the little paper bags that they love to open and larger lunch size bags to hold the bulkier, heavier items. The roll of Lifesavers was surprisingly quite the prize and later I did think that candy in a roll like that is special and peeling off each piece to enjoy is fun experience.
I added these wooden nutcracker tags to each bag and they all called out to each other to see what one they had as the younger ones figured out how to take it off the bag. Group gifts like this where everyone receives the same things are fun to enjoy together as each one opens up different parts and they collectively delight in what they find.
Personalized gift tags with a little sticker and white marker pen finished the ensemble and individualize the gift even though the items were all the same. Unfortunately these stickers did not want to stay on and I didn’t realize it until I was handing them out. But nothing a piece of tape on the back couldn’t fix.
I personally like the color and texture of brown kraft paper as it provides a very pleasant canvas or background to whatever I am are trying to do.
I made a total of seven of these gift bags for the class of children, but since some of the children were away over the holidays, I only gave these four away on the Sunday before Christmas.
It really is a joy to give simple items to children and see them so pleased even though many of the items require ingenuity and motor skills and cannot just be played with as is.
