Nail Cross Pendants or Magnetic Craft Stick Crosses:
Posted by member Lerner

Students can make either nail cross pendants as shown above, or make craft stick crosses mounted on a clothespin clip with magnetic backing.

Nail Crosses:

We used horseshoe nails for the crosses, a hot-glue gun to pre-glue them, and copper wire to wind them. Each member of cross (the crossbar and upright) is made out of two nails with a pointy end matched to a blunt end on each point of the cross to avoid having a sharp object dangling around a student's neck!

This is probably best for the 4th-6th grade group because some manual dexterity and strength is required to wire the nails together. We needed to pre-glue the nails together using a hot glue gun, and then the kids wired them and attached them to the necklace cord.

Craft stick crosses:

Younger children made decorated craft stick crosses mounted on clip clothespins. For these you will need craft sticks, sequins and glitter, white glue, clothespins, and stick-on magnets. These clips might be a good place to hang the rotation memory verses to learn at home!

You may want to cut the craft sticks (cut and file on sand paper – a good student activity?) so that the crosspiece is slightly shorter than the upright piece. Or use two different sizes of clothespins. The sticks are simply glued in a cross shape on the clothespin. Add the magnetic backing, and decorate the cross. Students might want to make additional ones as gifts.

If time is short, glue the sticks and the clothespins together in advance with tacky glue or a glue gun.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NAILS  AND THE CROSS:
(added by editor)

Nails are sharp objects, obviously, which can be used for good or bad. They can represent things we do well ("Nailed it!"), or things we did bad ("I got nailed").

Look at the nail cross you've made.
What did Jesus "nail" while on earth? (get right)
What got him in trouble? (nailed him)

What else did they use nails for in the story? (Nailing the sign)
What did the sign read? (King of the Jews)
God could have called us to pay for our sins. Instead, he nailed a sign for us to see. What was on OUR sign from God? Jesus!

What was God trying to tell us by allowing Jesus and his message to be "nailed" to the heart of history?

You might end your art project by creating messages which you can NAIL to a wooden cross. What 'sign' would YOU nail above Jesus?