It’s time to decorate for the holidays! The grandkids love to make special ornaments and help to trim the tree. Their participation helps them to engage into the holiday festivities and gives them a sense of pride in making their own decorations.
It’s difficult for your littles to not touch precious ornaments on your tree, or even grabbing and poking at the bright lights, which are always getting their attention. Avoid making Christmas a “don’t-touch holiday” for the little ones by elevating the lights and glass ornaments up to higher branches. Your grandchild can help you to make cute, unbreakable decorations for the bottom of your tree. Better yet, let them have and decorate their own tree!
We have purchased small, 2-4 foot artificial evergreen trees that the grandkids can place in their bedrooms. They can choose their color of lights (need only a small 35-50 ft. strand) and make all of their ornaments. These little trees make great night lights over the holiday season and they love to bring their friends and relatives up to their rooms to see their own trees! Provide a fun time together planning and crafting their special ornaments.
All children have miniature toys, such as plastic animals or small dolls (trolls). You can tie these with a ribbon and hang on their tree. Our boys love Legos. Hang these on their tree by placing and squeezing the ribbon between the Legos to hold it in place — so colorful! Another idea is to take them shopping to a craft store where they can choose between many options of mini-ornaments. Everything is available, from pets, snowmen, ballerinas and all sports; the idea is to make the tree a personal one, reflecting the child’s interests. Garland is the last thing we add to the tree. Our favorites include stringing popcorn (easier to do for a small tree) and macaroni. The macaroni can be painted first, or just string different types of pasta alternating with cranberries or beads.
If the kids love nature and want a more natural-looking tree, you could first go on a hike and collect pinecones and acorns. Prep these items for decorating by soaking in a bucket of water with ½ cup of white vinegar for 20 minutes. Allow to dry and place them on a foil-covered cookie sheet and bake at 200 degrees for 1 hour. When dry, spray with acrylic or varnish. You can hang as-is or let the kids paint them first. We painted our pinecones green, and then glued small pom-poms to the end of the scales. They were so easy to make and looked like mini Christmas trees.
For the younger grandchildren, you can make them a flannel Christmas tree! This was simple to assemble and has become a favorite to decorate. Actually, the older grandkids still love this tree and play with it every year! They take turns adding the ornaments and redecorate over and over again! To make: purchase about 1-2 yards of green flannel and a stack of different colored felt squares. Cut out a tree shape from the flannel and glue onto a poster or foam board. (I used a panel-type science poster board) Draw simple ornament shapes from the felt or use cookie cutters to trace the outlines of animals, stars or hearts. The kids can help decorate these felt ornaments by sprinkling glitter or adding additional felt pieces to make them fancier. A Christmas-wrapped shoebox makes a great container to store all the ornaments. Remember to make a large star or angel to place on top of the tree! Lean the tree board against the wall or anchor it with painter’s tape.
Whether you help your grandkids to assemble their own tree or make a flannel one (or both!), you have made special memories together during the holidays that will be remembered each year.
Photos by Karen Shadrach
