DIY I Spy Christmas Ornaments With a Free Printable

Today we made these fun I Spy ornaments inspired by the ones I saw on CBC Parenting. They're a great idea for gift giving and for your own children as well. In fact, we made them for some of Boo and Gator's cousins, but we ended up making extras for our own tree. The original instructions suggest using rice or fake snow to fill your ornaments, but we didn't have either of those things on hand; so we used some decorative sand instead. I think it added some fun color to our ornaments. It did make them quite heavy though; so if you choose to use sand, you'll definitely want to glue the tops closed. We also composed a cute little poem to attach to our ornaments listing the items hidden within, and I'm sharing it here in case anyone wants to use it or get ideas from it. The following are the steps we used to complete this project (poem download link is at the end of this post):

What you need:
clear ornaments with either screw-on or pull-off tops (we bought ours at Walmart for $0.97 each)
paper clips
small jingle bells (available in craft stores. Make sure they're small enough to fit through the hole in the top of the ornament.)
buttons
shells
yarn
miniature clothes pins (available in craft stores)
wooden beads (available in craft stores)
decorative sand
hot glue gun
ribbon
card stock
hole punch
scissors

Note that if you'd like to use different things to hide in your ornament, you can simply create your own list to attach.

Instructions
Put 1 paper clip, 1 jingle bell, 1 button, 1 shell, 1 clothes pin 2 wooden beads, and 3 pieces of yarn (we used different colors) into the top of your ornament. Fill the ornament about 3/4 up with sand. Close the ornament and glue with the glue gun to make sure it cannot be opened. Shake the ornament to mix the hidden items throughout. Print the poem out on card stock, punch a whole in it, and string it on a ribbon. attach the ribbon to the ornament, and you're finished. Now you can enjoy searching for all the items on the list. When you've found them, simply shake the ornament to stir things up, and play again.

Here's the text of the poem we used. The download includes five copies of it on a single page so that you can make more than one ornament at once.

Look inside! Use your little eye!

Here are ten things for you to spy!

A paper clip, a jingle bell,

A button and a small seashell!

Three bits of yarn, a tiny clothes pin,

Two wooden beads and that makes ten!

Did you find them? Was it fun?

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Download your own copy here!

As always, thanks for reading; and remember to visit CBC parenting for detailed instructions for these ornaments and lots more great projects and ideas.