Christmas time is finally here! One of everyone’s favourite holiday activities is to put up a Christmas tree and decorate it with glittering ornaments, colourful lights, and shining stars. What if you could make your own ornaments with just a few simple supplies?
Christmas Galaxy Ornament
To make your own galaxy Christmas ornament you will need:
Clear glass ornaments
Crayons of any colour you’d like (make sure to take off the wrapper)
Scissors, or a knife
Blow dryer
*Warning: Make sure you get help from a parent or guardian when working with sharp tools*
Instructions:
Begin by using your scissors or knife and create small shaving of your crayons onto a piece of paper. Make sure you have enough to fill your glass ornament.
Once you collect all your crayon shavings, pour them into your glass ornament. Grab your blow dryer and use it to melt your crayon shavings inside the ornament. You can do this by holding your ornament close to the blow dryer, using a high heat setting directed at the shavings. You will notice that the crayons are slowly starting to melt, keep blow-drying and rotating the ornament to make sure that all pieces of crayon in the ornament are melted, and the ornament is fully covered.
Continue blow-drying until the crayon has a melty look. When you’re happy with the final product, attach a hook and hang it on your Christmas tree!
Christmas Binary Code Ornament
Using the ASCII Binary Alphabet, create your own Christmas ornaments, bracelets, and code your name into it!
You will need:
Pony beads - larger quantity of 2 different colors and a smaller quantity of another color (total 3 colors)
Pipe cleaners
Binary Alphabet Sheet:
Instructions:
Once you have gathered all your materials, pick holiday-themed words such as SANTA, ELF, CHRISTMAS, or your family’s names, and come up with a list. 4 letter words are the easiest to fill up a pipe cleaner, if you have a longer word, then attach 2 pipe cleaners together.
Take your beads and designate what colour is 1 and what colour is 0. This is very important as the entire code relies on the base 2 numbering system.
Pick your word, find each letter on the binary code sheet, and write the code by threading the sequence of beads. Once you’re done with each letter, you can add an additional colour bead to separate the letters. For example, if I was to code ELF, and I’m using read beads for 1 and white for 0, I would look for ‘E’ on the sheet, and thread the code: white, red, white, white, and so on.
Twists the ends of the pipe cleaners together, and now your ornament is ready to hang on your Christmas tree!
Sources:
“Binary Alphabet Code Chart.” ScienceWorks, www.scienceworksmuseum.org/make-loom-weave-natural-materials/binary-alphabet-code-chart/.
“Christmas Coding Activity Steam Ornament for Kids.” Little Bins for Little Hands, 2016, www.littlebinsforlittlehands.com/christmas-coding-activity-stem-ornament-binary-alphabet/.
Johnson, Chrystal. “Easy Melted Crayon Galaxy Christmas Ornament.” Happy Mothering, 14 Dec. 2018, www.happy-mothering.com/easy-melted-crayon-galaxy-ornament/.
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