Stain Glass Toddler Art

We are doing an upcoming Easter party at our church and I wanted to give my activities a trial run before attempting them with 30 two and three year olds; so we could troubleshoot ahead of time.  Since we have had ample time being trapped during this bipolar spring it wasn't hard to find an opening in our schedule...

We are not a family that bans the Easter bunny or any other of the fun traditions surrounding Easter but we do try to to make extra effort to ensure the real reason for the season is apparent to our children.  When perusing Pinterest I came across this fun stain glass cross craft.  I already had all the supplies on hand, so we tried this one first.  We placed a sheet of contact paper sticky side up and taped the top and bottom to ensure it didn't curl up or move on my ocd toddlers. This was the hardest part.  It kept wanting to curl over and stick on itself so you had to work quick. Taping the top first and then slowly peeling the paper as you went worked the best.  I had pre-cut a cross outline out of black construction paper and carefully placed it on the contact paper starting at the top and working my way down to try and minimize bubbling.  I had assorted tissue paper cut out in squares (because I am anal about the uniform look of it) but you could easily have your kids cut it or tear it.  Then it was free reign for the little ones.  I made sure to explain that once they set the tissue on the sticky part it was permanent and would be impossible to move.  You know, to try and minimize the epic meltdowns that could occur if a tissue square could not be relocated and it was a two year old life or death situation... They were very serious about distributing their tissue colors evenly throughout their cross.  I tried to explain to keep it inside the cross but that was too limiting.  They wanted it everywhere.  Doesn't matter though because you cut off the extra anyway.  This took 30 minutes!  That's like 3 hours toddler time!  It was AWESOME!  Mainly because it required very little supervision or help from me.  So, I was free to do fun mom stuff like clean the kitchen undisturbed while they were tackling it.  Once they were finished, I took a second piece of contact paper and placed it on top of the first sticky side down and ran the straight edge of my scissor over it to get out any bubbles.  Then trimmed around the outline of the cross.

I think they turned out great!  We hung them on the back window and the March snow blindness in the background really helped bring out the colors :)