Crafts at Gymnastics Camp - Day 1 - Refrigerator Magnets

Last week I "did crafts" 3 days at Gymnastics Camp. Almost 30 girls and boys, age 4-17 ran, played, jumped, danced, flipped, and  did a few crafts.

It's fun to create refrigerator magnets made with flat-back glass marbles (I bought these at JoAnn's floral section), scrapbook paper, Mod Podge, and magnets.

I've seen these several places, including  E-How and DailyDwelling.

They are so simple and quick, and the designs are only limited to what you can find on a piece of paper.  I cut some designs from my scrapbook stash, and printed out a few stylized gymnastics clip art pictures.
 

The children chose paper squares, brushed the backs of the glass marbles with Mod Podge, and smushed the marbles onto the face of the paper.  When you first paint on the Mod Podge, it appears cloudy, but soon it dries crystal clear.

While the initial coat dried, the children ran off to play one game of 4-Square.  Then back they came to trim edges and "glue" on magnets using Mod Podge as the glue. All done!  Pick them up on your way home!

 A few hints and observations:

- Since we were marking these on the back before they were totally dry, we had some bleed-through of Sharpie pen on some magnets

- Buy the heavy-duty magnets - they are so much stronger.  KEEP THE MAGNETS SEPARATED DURING THE DRYING PHASE!  These magnets are strong enough to pull together, and you come back to find a magnet has slid right off one marble onto its neighbor.

- 5-year-olds need a lot of help trimming

- When I did this at home, I took the time to seal the back with Mod Podge also, but didn't while working in 30-minute classes.  

More Gymnastics Camp crafts soon!