As a home school mom of ten children, creativity is a part of our everyday life. Computer games are limited, so seeking fun and educational activities is a priority. With having a large family and our children having a lot of friends, making gifts is one of their ways of putting their creativity to use by being giving.

For our youngest children, the crayons and coloring is a never ending project. Just doing a simple search on the internet, oodles of various themes can be found for children to color. Letters of the alphabet with corresponding primary pictures can be found for young children to color - not only having fun coloring but learning about letters and their sounds. If your child loves "Cinderella" or specific cartoon characters, these can also easily be found in a coloring format. All that is needed for this everyday activity is a printer, crayons and paper.

One older children have liked giving is a puzzle picture of their friends. Have a special picture of friends enlarged, paste it to cardstock paper that is larger than the picture, and then cut up the picture to be pieced back together. If it is a special "sweet sixteen" birthday, cut out the number "16" and of course keeping all the other pieces as well. A nice frame might be included with the puzzle so when the recipient of the gift puts it together, it can be put into the frame for a permanent wall picture.

Another fun gift for children of any age to make, is wallpaper envelopes. Most wallpaper stores will give for free outdated wallpaper books. Take a small envelope or the square type invitation envelope and carefully pull it apart. Use this as a pattern and trace it on a piece of cardboard (a cereal box works great). Cut out and use this as your pattern piece on the wallpaper. All that has to be done to complete the envelopes is to fold and glue. Grandparents and teen girls alike will love to receive this uniquely made envelopes.

Composition notebooks are another great activity to make doing schoolwork in a little more enjoyable by decorating and personalizing. Again wallpaper samples, craft paper, or even scrap material can be cut out to fit and be glued on the front of the notebook. Scrapbooking paper with sports themes or special interests (such as puppies, horses, music symbols, etc.) can be used to make a personalized journal notebook as well. Notebooks can even be decorated according to school subjects, and then stickers for the person's name applied. To

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