As we near Christmas Day, our family has finally begun to decorate our home a bit. We spent some time over the weekend putting up wreaths and digging out our ornaments in preparation for decorating our tree. One part of the excitement of Christmas for my 3 and 4 year olds has been the opportunity to make their own ornaments and decorate their own little personal tree for their room. Now, I have never considered myself to be a crafty kind of mom. However, I do what I must for my little girls, so we pulled out construction paper, scissors, plain white paper, crayons, and began creating!
What we came up with was fairly simple.
- The gift you see above was simply a square with my feeble attempts at drawing a bow on top. If you are that crafty mom, then I am sure you could use pretty craft papers and cutting tools to make a much more beautiful gift than this one, but I think you at least get the idea. My children were very pleased with the result, and my 3 year old, especially, was thrilled to see “a little present” on their tree when she entered the bedroom.
- Next you can see that I made a tiny Holy Bible. It would have been nicer if I had used black construction paper and perhaps cut out tiny letters in gold to spell out the title. However, I was making use of the scraps we had leftover from the project immediately preceding this activity, so we ended up with a very plain Bible for the tree.
- This sweet little angel is the ornament of which I am most proud. I have never claimed to be an artist, but as I began to sketch, it wasn’t as difficult as I had expected. I basically drew a head attached to a choir robe, then attached one more circle up top to act as the halo (bend so it will ‘hover’ over the angel’s head). Maybe you could be a bit more creative? Use yellow construction paper or some sort of ribbon to create a pretty halo or spend some time coloring the hair. For me, just getting it done was the priority, because my little ones were more interested in hanging the items on their tree than in how ‘prettied up’ they were. I have hopes that, as the years pass, we can continue making ornaments and get a bit more elaborate with our creations. We shall see. I may become that crafty mom yet!
- The last ornament is a yellow star. My 3 year old adores the color yellow and stars, so this is obviously her favorite kind of ornament. I drew a 5-point star. Some of you may be able to simply cut one out of the construction paper but my attempt at that did not turn out well. A fun addition to this would be some gold glitter glue. Then your star will sparkle when any sort of light hits it!
For all of the ornaments we created, I used a simple single hole punch to create a hole at the top, and then used bread ties as hangers. That was my 4 year old’s idea. Brilliant!
Another activity we have enjoyed is coloring together. I have always loved this particular activity, and I have made a point to sit down with all of my children at times to be a part of this bit of fun with them. Since it is the Christmas season, we have been coloring Christmas-themed pages that I created. I’ve listed those below for you, as well as a few free printables from others, in case you would like to do the same with your own children (many can also be used with older children!).
Free 12 Days of Christmas Pack
Free Nativity PreK-K Printable Pack (Limited Time)
FREE Copy Work~ Sing Unto the Lord!
FREE Christmas PreK/K pack {Updated and Expanded}
Need more ideas for making this season fun and meaningful for your preschool children?
- take a field trip to a Christmas tree farm
- pick up Christmas-themed books from the local bookstore or library (try One December Night, brand new on Amazon and written by a friend of mine!)
- bake sugar cookies and decorate (and eat!) them together
- help your child pick out gifts for siblings or his other parent/grandparents and wrap them together
- read the Christmas story from the Bible, discussing together how Jesus is the TRUE Gift of Christmas
Are you a crafty mom? What kinds of fun and meaningful activities do you do during this season with your children? Please share in the comments!
