Catholic Icing: Christ the King Craft

Catholic ABC's Week: 16
Letter of the week: K
Theme: King (Jesus is King or Christ the King)
Saint of the Week: Blessed Kateri
Craft: Jesus is King

I knew I wanted to make "K" week about Jesus being king, but coming up with a craft was harder than I thought it would be! I wanted it to be a clearly religious king craft. There are already so many secular king crafts out there, so there's no need to waist my time re-creating the wheel, are you with me? Lol!

Materials Needed to Complete This Craft:

Fun Foam (or substitute construction paper or card stock)
Decorations for crown (Examples: glitter glue, stick on jewels, markers, stickers, etc. We used glitter glue)
Hot Glue (grown up use only)
Popsicle sticks
School Glue
Styrofoam Balls (or substitute pool noodles)

Start by cutting the foam or paper into a crown shape. You can cut a regular, flat crown shape, but if you curve the shape a little the crown will have a cuter shape when the craft is complete. Older kids should be able to do their own cutting.

Let the kids decorate the crowns however they like. I lightly drew a "K" on my daughter's crown and let her trace over it with glitter glue. She did a pretty good job! Mostly I let her free style it because she loves to be creative!

You need 2 popsicle sticks to make the cross. Shorten one of them with some scissors, and let the kids glue them together and decorate the crosses as well.

When your decorations dry, it's time to put it all together! Carefully saw a styrofoam ball in half with a sharp kitchen knife. Use your cool glue gun to attach the foam around the base of the ball. Then your kids can stick their cross in the middle of the crown!

If you're looking for a cheaper option, I found that a slice of pool noodle worked just as well as the styrofoam. The only difference is that you'll have to make a small slit with a sharp knife for inserting the cross- it won't work to just stick it straight in. You can get pool noodles for a dollar and get enough to make probably 75 of these, so the pool noodle option is infinitely cheaper. I can get sryrofoam balls at my Dollar Tree, but they are a pricey craft supply at special craft stores- up to several dollars each! Here's one we did with a pool noodle slice:

FYI- you can also get packages of these for $1 at the Dollar Tree:

Thanks to everyone on Catholic Icing's facebook wall who bounced ideas with me about how to make these crosses stand up! You guys are a great crowd and I love talking to all of you!

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter K: (be sure to check out the Classroom Scriptfor directions on using the grab bag.) Kitten, Koala bear, Kangaroo, Ketchup packet, Knot, King, Key. (Avoid anything starting with "Kn" that doesn't make the classic "K" sound. That's confusing for kids.)

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter K. (Her K lesson is on King Solomon.)

Catholic ABC's runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday with the new letter of the week. You can get the details of this program by checking out the Classroom Script.