• Make winter ornaments with ordinary white craft glue.bottle of glue on black marble image by phizics from Fotolia.com
  
  Banish the winter doldrums. Keep your children entertained, by making easy winter crafts. Spend an afternoon showing children how to assemble decorations for the inside and outside of your home. Kids will enjoy their homemade items long after the crafting is over, and you can help them hang the outdoor decorations when the weather has cleared.
  
  

Snowman Ornaments

• Use craft glue to make simple and inexpensive ornaments. Pour a small amount of white glue onto a piece of wax paper. Using a toothpick, shape the glue to form two circles that overlap slightly to create the body of your snowman ornament. Press a loop of craft wire or a paper clip bent into a V-shape into the top of the snowman's head. Decorate the snowman with buttons, twig arms, a carrot nose and a top hat cut from construction paper while the glue is still wet. As the glue dries, the wire and decorations will be embedded in the ornament. Thread a piece of yarn or string through the loop to hang the ornament. Experiment with colored glues to create different types of ornaments.
  
  

Soap Snowballs

• Encourage kids to get clean by showing them how to make snowball-inspired soaps. Grate several bars of white soap with a cheese grater or shred the soap in a food processor. Cheese graters may scrape little fingers, so adults should handle this step of the craft. Add approximately one tablespoon of water at a time, until you can mix the soap and water together to form a dough. Let children shape the soapy dough into snowballs. Let them dry on a sheet of wax paper. For added fun, form the soap dough around small plastic toys; the toys will later be revealed as the child bathes.
  
  

Pipecleaner Snowflakes

• Use pipe cleaners and beads to form quick and easy snowflake ornaments. Clear, crystal beads will create sparkling snowflakes, but you can let kids use any type of beads that they want to make white or colorful snowflakes. Twist together the center of three large pipe cleaners to form the base of the snowflake. Arrange the pipe cleaners so that the ends are spaced evenly apart to resemble the spokes of a wheel. Thread beads onto each pipe cleaner. Bend the end of the pipe cleaner to hold the beads in place. Tie a piece of string to one of the bent pipe cleaner ends to hang the snowflake as an ornament.
  
  

Birdseed Treats

• Kids can make simple birdseed treats to hang outside and help feed the local birds during cold winter months. Children can use cookie cutters to cut shapes into stale pieces of bread; they can then decorate them with edible treats. Set out bowls of birdseed, dried fruits, nuts and popcorn. Let children press the treats into the peanut butter. Poke a hole into the top of their tasty creations and hang the treat outside, where children will be able to watch the birds enjoy their craft. Instead of using bread, you can spread the peanut butter on bagels or pine cones.