Stainglass Christmas Trees

Well, Christmas is one week from today and we still have so many Christmas crafts to finish up.  Yesterday, I cut tree shapes into a pizza cardboard box.  I, then gave Monkey the hole punch and told him to punch as many holes in the tree as he wanted.  Next he painted the tree green on the non-printed side.

While the paint dried, I cut up green and red tissue paper into small squares.  Monkey covered the tree in glue (I think a glue stick might have worked a little better for this but I was afraid it was going to rip the tissue paper)

Then he started to cover the entire tree with pieces of tissue.

Let it dry (for a long time if you used as much glue as Monkey did)  Then I trimmed up the pieces of tissue that were hanging over the sides.  And that was it.  Really easy, but super cute.  When it was completely dry, we hung it up in the window so the sun could shine through.

Looks like a little stain glass Christmas tree.  You could definitely spice them up with a little glitter and/or decorations, but Monkey wanted to leave it plain!

Popsicle Stick Tree and Stars

This was an EXTRA easy craft that was PERFECT for Monkey.  I loved it because I did not have to prepare anything for it.  I just grabbed some popsicle sticks and glue, and a few cut pieces of yarn!  Our great friends over at Happy Hooligans gave me this idea (again!!!!)

Generally I would have got none-coloured popsicles sticks, but these were left over from our Thanksgiving turkey crafts (I wasn't blogging then so you can't see how cute they were)  All we did was put some glue in the centre of the sticks and then stick 3 or 4 together!  Like I said super easy!

 

Here is how they turned out!  Monkey just kept wanting to do more and more, so I figured why not (Our Christmas tree is still looking a little bare due to half the decorations breaking last year)

Once they all dried we used the glue gun to glue some yarn to them so we could hang them up.  I got Monkey to cut the pieces of yarn to size, so he could again practice those scissor skills!!

Here are some on our tree!  (Side note: up in the left hand corner is our glue gingerbread man from last year.  So easy to make, just glue and glitter and cookie cutters!  We will be making some more of them this week too!)

When we were done, there were a few Green popsicle sticks left over, and out of the blue Monkey said it looked like a TREE!  So we used the scissors again to cut them down a little bit more on each one.  Then he said we needs a "truck"...took me a few tries to figure out what he was talking about and then I realized he meant TRUNK!  (Side note: speech therapy FINALLY starts on Dec 22!)  He picked up a broken piece of yellow that was sitting in the bottom of the box and said it was the Star.  He glued them all on and VOILA a beautiful Christmas tree!

So, two really easy Christmas crafts which worked on great skills!  We always need the scissor practice and anything I can do with scissors is great!! 

Felt Play Christmas Tree

Well, my tree is still standing, and has yet to come down this year, however, I have re-decorated it about 50 or so times!  I can't keep the boys hands off the decorations!!  I went to Pinterest to find something that could solve my problem!  This is what I found! Play Felt Tree and Ornaments

So after a friend kindly made a trip to Michael's to pick up a big peice of green felt, I was ready to cut!  Turns out I can't really cut a tree all that well, but the kids sure don't mind.  I added a little trunk to the tree to make it a little more real for them.  I cut bulb shaped ornaments, and some garland. and a little star for the top.

I left the tree out on the table for Monkey, so when he came down in the morning, it was a nice surprise for him to decorate!  He got right to it

And re-decorated....

...and re-decorated...

We moved it to the floor so Logey-Bear could play as well.  I was really close to him because I suspected that the peices would go right into his mouth....

..."What, I don't have anything in my mouth!!!"

..."Oh wait....yes I do!!!!"

So all in all, Monkey loves the tree and decorates it over and over and over....and Logey, well he likes to try and eat it, so not so great for him.  Monkey has decorated it by putting all the same colours together in each section, and by mixing up the colours.  It is amazing to watch him keep going back to it, to make it just right!   HOWEVER, I have still re-decorated our REAL tree about 15 more times, so it really didn't solve my problem!  But still cute nonetheless!