With Christmas just around the corner, the kids (5 and 7) and I spent an afternoon making some colorful Christmas banners to decorate the house with. As soon as we finished one, they would say, “Let’s do another one!”, so we would come up with another phrase and I kept cutting out more and more colored squares. Not only was it fun, it was a great way to get the kids to practice their spelling and writing out letters.

From our home to yours: Merry Christmas! Love and Happiness! Joy to the world! Peace on earth! Happy Holidays! Best wishes for the new year! Seasons Greetings! Santa Claus is coming to town!

	1. Get your supplies together. If you don’t have what is pictured here, you can certainly improvise, eg, if you don’t have any colored cardstock, just use white cardboard and decorate the letters with colored markers and/or crayons, don’t have curling ribbon? then twine or yarn will do.
	2. Cut out a bunch of squares that are approx 3″ x 3″ (8cm x 8cm).
	3. Decorate each square with a letter. I encouraged the kids to be creative and come up with different styles. We also used a love heart or a star as the spaces between the words.
	4. Stack the letters in order and punch a hole near the top on either side of each square.
	5. String them together with curling ribbon or twine. Make sure you leave enough on the ends for hanging. I did a slip knot on the ends so that it was easy to adjust the length and to hook it on a nail or the end or the stair bannister.