Easy Preschool Christmas Crafts: Stained Glass Christmas Tree

I don’t know about you, but whenever I search for ‘easy preschool Christmas crafts’, I get hits that involve both GLUE and GLITTER – both of which are NOT allowed out of the drawers when there are FOUR 2 year olds in the house on babysitting days! Here’s one that fits the ‘easy to clean up’ bill for mom. 

I kinda feel like I’m beating this mac-tac stained glass craft to death, but seriously – there are so many different ways that you can use this craft, and there is NO GLUE MESS TO CLEAN UP AFTER! The kids really loved this one, in particular – and were a little sad when we mailed one off to an Opa who just had heart surgery (6 bypasses!) and one off to an Uncle in Korea. Guess we’ll have to get our craft on again tomorrow and make some for our OWN windows!!

Materials Needed:

• Black construction paper (1 sheet per tree)
• Green, Yellow, Brown or Black, and other colours (for decorations) tissue paper cut into squares. (You can buy pre-cut 1″ square tissue paper at Dollarama!)
• Mac-Tac / clear contact paper

Aside: By the way, I LOVE that I can put fun filters onto my pics with the HTC One M8, like the sketch above! 

The Process:

1. Fold 1 piece of black construction paper in half (so the long side is the fold) and, starting from the top of the fold, draw half of a star sitting on top of a simple Christmas Tree. 
2. Cut along your line, fold your other sheets of construction paper, and trace the tree onto the others. Cut remaining trees out
3. With the tree still folded in half, cut the inside out of the the star, leave a black outline, then cut out the inside of the christmas tree, leaving a black outline between the tree and the tree trunk.
4. Cut a rectangle of contact paper the same size as the tree. Peel away the backing of the contact paper and tape it to the table, sticky side up, and carefully place the Christmas tree onto the contact paper. 
5. Have your children decorate the tree – with the small kids, I just put out one colour at a time – first we did the star yellow, then the tree trunk brown, and then I took out the colourful ‘decoration’ tissue paper, cut them into smaller yet pieces, and let them decorate the tree. After they put as much colour on as they wanted, I took out the green tissue paper and they filled in all of the empty spaces. 
6. (optional) cut another piece of contact paper out, the same size as the first, and carefully peel back the paper and smooth on top of the finished tree. 
7. Using scissors, trim the tree (cut away the excess contact paper) as close to the black frame as possible.
8. Hang in the window for all your neighbours to admire!

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Jenn vanOosten

I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and love my city. I'm a Netflixer, choral music geek, bookworm, inventor of recipes (I take Artistic Licence on EVERYTHING that I make), wife of one, mother of two, and owner of a neurotic Schnauzer. I respect people who respect others. I love good food that's well done, but my favourite lunch is KD & hotdogs. With ketchup. I'm addicted to Clearance Shopping. I will ALWAYS get the product that I want at the price that I want, eventually.

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