One of my favorite Christmas memories of when my boys were toddlers was how they would constantly rearrange the ornaments on the lower part of our Christmas tree. Every day, the bottom of our tree looked different.
Well, this simple Christmas tree activity was inspired by those memories.
Sure, my boys might be five and seven now and no longer toddlers, but they still love decorating the tree. And now they have their own that they can decorate as much as they want and as often as they want.
A version of this post originally appeared on the CBC Parents website.
What You'll Need for this Christmas Tree Activity
The materials that we used for this activity all came from the dollar store and are reusable for other activities. For instance, the tape used in this activity was previously used for this Christmas graphing activity and you could use the foam shapes to create a Christmas sensory bin. Here's all that we used:
- Green painter's tape or washi tape - It doesn't have to be green, but it will look more like a Christmas tree if it is green.
- Large foam Christmas shapes - We're using gingerbread people, candy canes, and snowflakes, but use whatever you can find at your dollar store.
- Large mirror or window - As an alternative, you could even try it on the tile around the bathtub during bath time!
- Small container of water - You could also use a spray bottle filled with water if you prefer. Another option is to add a paint brush for some extra fine motor practice.
To set up this activity, you will first have to make a giant tape Christmas tree on your chosen vertical surface using the green painter's tape. You can make it as big or as small as you'd like although the size might depend on the size of your foam Christmas shapes. I chose to make our tree a bit taller than my youngest son. That way he had to stretch to decorate the top of it. It's too bad I didn't have a foam star to put on the top of the tree!
Once your tape tree is created, set out a shallow container filled with a small amount of water and the foam shapes. Again, you could substitute a spray bottle filled with water or include a paint brush for kids to paint the water onto the foam shapes.
Here's how our activity was set up:
Time for Christmas Tree Decorating!
In case you're wondering how this activity works, it's important to know that when craft foam is wet, it easily sticks to mirrors and windows. A little water goes a long way so the foam doesn't need much water to make them stick.
So all kids have to do is simply dip the foam shapes into the water and stick them to the mirror or window to decorate the Christmas tree.
The kids can reposition and redecorate their tree over and over as many times as they like. That's the joy of using water and craft foam! It's not permanent by any means.
Here's one of the finished Christmas trees that my boys decorated:
This Christmas tree activity was a huge hit with my boys. They absolutely loved it!
