Tag: Create Your Own

Decorate Your Own Christmas Tree

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I love activities that let creativity and imagination bloom!

Check out this super fun Christmas activity! Your readers can decorate their own Christmas tree and let their own creativity run wild all while developing their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. In fact, you can even sneak in a little color and shape learning!

Decorating your own Christmas tree doesn’t take special materials or even superior creativity. Pull out what you have:

  • markers
  • crayons
  • paint
  • stickers
  • string
  • paper shapes
  • buttons
  • ribbon
  • glitter (if you are super brave 🤣)

Anything goes!

The best way to inspire my kiddos creativity is to first read and then have them complete the activity. I love these classic Christmas stories and both feature decorated trees to inspire your readers.

This activity is super versatile. You can print the FREE printable (on white or colored paper!) and decorate right on the paper or you can cut out the tree, decorate, and glue it onto a bigger collage. The options are endless!

We read Christmas stories at our community story time this week and then the kiddos completed this activity. I always love seeing what they will come up with. Each tree is as unique as the artist who created it!

I love that these activities make wonderful festive decorations!

Don’t forget to grab the FREE printable, HERE!

decorate-your-own-christmas-treeDownload

Happy Decorating!

Create Your Own Crown

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Calling all princes, princesses, kings, and queens!! Hear ye, hear ye! By royal decree, you will now create your own royal crown! 👑

Whether your little one dreams of being a fairy tale princess or Prince of the Cheetah Cats, their imagination can soar and their creativity can take charge with this activity!

The materials are very simple and you can substitute anything you have on hand to make it unique! Cut out a crown shape. (You can use my FREE printable if you want!) Then encourage your little one to make it their own. Add in stickers, paper shapes to glue on, crayons or markers, buttons, gems, even glitter if you are feeling super brave! Anything goes!

crown-templateDownload

And if you are planning this activity for your community story time, you will need to repeat the cutting process over and over again…. 🤪

But look at all those fun rainbow colors!!! I printed my template onto colored card stock to give it extra weight. I also like starting with colored car stock because it lets each kiddo make something in their own favorite color.

Check out all those little fingers hard at work! Each crown as as unique as the kiddo who created it!

When the kiddos were done decorating we used a hole punch to punch a hole on each side of the crown template. We then used a piece of yarn to tie it into a crown. The yarn is an easy way to make it adjustable, but I do recommend using a double thickness of yarn to give your crown a little more durability.

Our finished works!

Now we are donning our crowns and off to imagine a brave new world full of adventure, intrigue, mystery, dragons, fairies, and more!

What will you be the Queen or King of next??

Happy Creating!

Create Your Own Flower Garden

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I love open-ended activities!

I host a weekly community story time and the kiddos who attend are from a wide range of ages (age 1-12) and interests. I am always on the lookout for activities that can be fun for that entire range.

This fun activity is basically free to put together – especially if you have paper and glue on hand! – and it can be fun for any ability level.

Speaking of materials – I used construction paper and some neon copy paper. Any paper you have on hand, even scrap paper, would be great for this activity. I also handed out glue sticks because they are so easy for little hands to use successfully.

TIP – if you only have white paper on hand, have your little one color all over the paper before you cut out the shapes! The effect would be so special!

I spent a little time before story time cutting out shapes. This is not the time for perfection! 😉 I went with triangles in various sizes, rectangles and narrow strips, small and large circles, leaf shapes, and tear drop shapes.

Honesty moment – I started out tracing circles and cutting each one out but I highly recommend tracing one shape and then folding the paper so you can cut multiple shapes at once.

Keep in mind that this is an open-ended activity. That means that nothing needs to be perfect and you don’t need a set number of shapes or specific colors to make it work. I loved the variety created from the paper I had on hand, but it would be wonderful with far less colors, too!

Now the fun part – start gluing and sticking!

For story time, I made an example page to show everyone before they got started. Sometimes seeing an example helps get creative juices flowing. However, I was super clear that they were free to create and explore as they wanted.

I loved seeing how diverse the flower gardens turned out. They were all unique – no 2 flowers came out the same. It was wonderful!

If you look closely you will find some extra creative kiddos even made bugs, rain, and a garden shed on their pages! I wouldn’t have ever thought of doing that, but I LOVE it!

This activity can be adapted in so many ways to suit your group and supplies. BONUS – it is perfect for encouraging hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

I cannot wait to see what creations you come up with!!

Happy Creating!