Simple Christmas Tree Craft

Today's winter holiday activity is based on Christmas trees! We love decorating our Christmas tree each year, although ours isn't set up yet (crazy, I know!). So this was a fun activity for the kids to decorate their own little Christmas tree before we set up the real one. Ok, well technically it is fake because we have pets that would eat a real tree, but you know what I mean. :)

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We used:

Paper Plates Basic plates work fine! We used plates with ridges to look more tree-like! :)

Acrylic Paint We used green paint for the tree and then decided to glue on "ornaments" instead of painting some on. 

Glitter Pens or Loose Glitter We used loose glitter in a little shaker for easy pouring. 

Sequins as ornaments, because they are pretty and sparkly! 

Glue Sticks To glue the ornaments to the tree. Just make sure the tree is completely dry before you try gluing anything on. 

Metallic Markers We used a gold coloured one. And these ones are the most similar to the ones we used. 

Holiday Stickers - Completely optional, but we ended up using some at the end. 

The kids love paper plate crafts! And this one is pretty simple. I cut the plate in 3-4 pieces that were roughly triangular shaped. I was aiming for big, medium and small parts, so that the pieces can be stacked. I set up the pieces on one side so they could easily reach for the next one.

And I set up a plate of green paint on the other side.

The kids then painted each of the pieces green.

As each piece was painted, I set them up to dry on some other plates, so they could be easily be moved.

Then I let them dry overnight. We moved on to make our adorable snowmen. The next morning I set up all the materials so that the kids could get started on their craft right away after breakfast. They love these morning sensory craft activities! It's also really fun to do something creative each morning. :)

I let Bean pour a bit of sequins into the bowl. 

Munchkin removed all the tree pieces from their drying plates and stacked them up.

I set up the other materials, including glue sticks, glitter and scissors (which I used to cut out the stars from one of the drying plates).

They were very eager to use the glue sticks again! Munchkin enjoyed gluing on some ornaments.

Bean jumped right  in and was the first to use the glitter.

While they glued and glittered, I cut out stars and coloured them gold using a metallic marker. They aren't super shiny, but they are perfectly golden!

Look at all that glitter... Glitter Glory over here. And the shocker is that none of the glitter ended up on the floor, couch or anywhere in the living room. I'm seriously amazed. Bean was so entranced with pouring glitter that she never once got up to walk around. Munchkin poured a bit but he mainly enjoyed gluing sequins and then playing at his train table.

Be sure to shake off any excess glitter onto a piece of paper and pour it back into the container. We let them dry for a little while. The kids also rearranged all the pieces to see what combinations they liked best.

Munchkin's favourite one. We used this one for his "little tree"!

When you are ready to glue the pieces together (and honestly, if you want these to stick extra well, use hot glue) only glue at the top. You may need extra to hold them together. And give them plenty of time to dry!

We used three pieces for each tree and two pieces for Munchkin's "little tree". Last step is to glue on the stars. Just add a bit of glue to the top of the tree and stick them on.

While those were drying I cut tree trunks out of brown construction paper and some white stripes.

At the top of each of the white stripes, I cut a wavy edge, each one random. This will be snow.

We used blue construction paper for the sky and glued the bottom of the paper and arranged the snow paper against the edge.

Then we glued the back of the tree trunks and put them in the middle of the snow at the center of the page.

Like this!

I double checked that the trees were dried and sturdy and set them up on a tray.

You can flip them over and add glue there, but we found that may disrupt them, but it worked out.

So instead we glued directly onto the sky paper roughly the size of the tree. This way is much easier for the kids.

The winter scenes came out beautifully! Bean was so excited about her Christmas trees and enjoyed showing them off.

Munchkin only made one, but he loves his "little tree".

And here is what they look like with Christmas stickers! Super cute!

Please always stay within arms reach of your child(ren) when they are playing. Some arts and crafts materials may not be age suitable for every child. Please use your own judgement when creating arts and crafts activities for your child(ren). 

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