My 3.5 year old and I decided to spread candy cane cheer during the month of December when I came across the idea from a fellow blogger about December holiday service ideas.

First, Esmeralda and I decided to read The Legend of the Candy Cane, Newly Illustrated Edition: The Inspirational Story of Our Favorite Christmas Candy by Lori Walburg.

In this book, a stranger comes to town and starts building and opening up a shop.  Everyone in the town wishes for the shop to turn into something that they would like, including the kids.  No one speaks to the stranger to ask what his shop is going to be and nobody offers to help.  Finally, one day, a little girl named Lucy gets brave enough to go to the shop and ask if he needs help.  She unpacks the crates and finds an assortment of candies to her delight!  She then sees all of the candy canes and asks what they are, as she had never seen them before.  The stranger then reveals who he is and the story behind the candy canes.  If you do not know the true origin of candy canes, this is a really good read!  I learned a lot about candy canes that I had not known before.  Without giving too much away, I will say that I had no idea the origin of candy canes had anything to do with religion.  I highly suggest this book!

After reading this book, since Esmeralda loves arts and crafts, I had the idea of making candy canes from paper.  I made 15 of them because as I was thinking of what to do beyond the art part, I realized that we could spread candy cane cheer at her tumbling class with all of her friends!

What You Need:

• Red construction paper
• White card stock paper (or if you do the hard route like me, print them off on regular white paper and then glue them onto construction paper to cut out for the thicker, sturdier feeling)
• Scissors
• Glue

What You Do:

• Print off a candy cane pattern to trace if you do not want to do it freehand.  I am bad at that so I chose to print the outline out.  I found mine here.
• Trace onto white card stock paper (or if you do the hard route like me, glue them onto construction paper to cut out for the thicker, sturdier feeling)
• Cut candy cane pattern out
• Cut red construction paper into strips.  You can measure everything if you want, but I just cut them into really long strips and then cut off excess as needed.
• Glue red paper strips onto candy cane to make stripes

Our candy canes were done!

I originally wanted to attach a candy cane poem to the candy canes and glue on miniature candy canes, but I came up with a better idea once I read the poem called “Candy Cane Seeds.”  The author is unknown.  The poem reads:

I once knew a gardener who knew how to grow
Bright tasty candies, from under the snow
I asked her to share her secret with me
And this is what she replied quite readily,
“To garden in winter snow is difficult you see
It takes lots of care and a very special seed
Here are a couple seeds to grow your own treats
And you’ll soon reap a harvest of
Candy cane treats! ~Author Unknown

So I took that idea and we bought those circle candy cane candies and put some in a Ziploc bag.  I had stapled the candy canes to the outside of the bags and also printed out the poem on printer paper, cut it out, and glued it onto green construction paper.  It was dropped in with the candies and then zipped shut.

Esmeralda’s tumbling class loved them and thanked us for them!  15 was really too many but now we have extra to give to her cousins!

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