Being on winter break and being shut inside during the cold winter months is a perfect time for quality time with the kids! I love to do crafts and it is so fun when I can get my son involved as well! As he is older he is less interested in crafts so I have to be clever to find activities that he would like to participate in with me. I do this by taking his interests and finding activities that compliment and include things that he likes. One of the things that he likes is architecture and stained glass. We recently went to a wedding at Notre Dame and he was enthralled by the windows in the Basilica. I decided that we could definitely do something fun with that! I remember when I was young I would cut designs out of a black piece of construction paper then glue colored tissue paper in the open spots to make stained glass. To make it a bit easier, I decided to use wax paper and draw our designs with Sharpies!

Stained Glass Window from the Basilica at Notre Dame!
We started out with snowflakes to get the hang of it before we do a giant design!
We printed out snowflake designs from the web like this one. . .
    and traced them onto the wax paper with the gold and silver Sharpies.
I am holding them up to the window.
I think it would look great traced with black as well.
We colored in the designs with shades of blue. . .
     Then we put a frame around it and hung it in our wintery window!
Now we are going to try and take a long sheet of wax paper and make a big sheet of stained glass design to fill a window! That will bring some color into the dreary winter day!