New Year's Eve Noise Maker

Christmas has come & gone & we're now on to New Year's Eve festivities. We're having a few friends over to our house to celebrate both the New Year & M2's 2nd Birthday (a.k.a. Happy TWO Year! It's also her golden birthday... pictures to come!) I wanted to have a fun project planned for all the little ones Friday evening while we're celebrating to go along with all the hats, snacks & fun, so we took it for a test run today... New Year's Noise Makers!

Supplies- Large Paper Plate, Glue, Stapler, Uncooked Beans or Rice, 1 Large Popsicle Stick, Glitter, Various Decorations (foam pieces, sequence, stickers, etc. Basically whatever you can find!), Crayons/Markers for some color.

1. Fold the paper plate in half as seen below.
2. Staple around the edge of the plate about 3/4 of the way around, leaving a small hole near the end.

3. Fill the shaker with a handful of beans by pushing them through the unstapled end of the paper plate.

4. Complete the edge by stapling the rest of the way around, securing the beans inside the shaker.
5. Wedge the popsicle stick in between two of the staples near the bottom center of the shaker.
(If necessary, secure with a piece of scotch tape.)

6. Decorate away! I let M1 & M2 just place pieces where they wished until it was somewhat covered.

7. We also added a little glue/glitter to the outside edge of the shaker in an attempt to cover the staples a bit.

 (I gave M1 the option to color the shaker to give it some more color but she was happy with it just the way it was!)

8. Allow to dry & Shake Away!

I am looking forward to making these with all of our visitors Friday night. I'm pretty certain they'll have fun shaking & dancing to some music. I'm hoping to add some tissue paper streamers around the outside to jazz it up as well. I can't believe it's almost 2011!!!
Enjoy! s.b.