23 Days Of Holiday Crafts, Day 2: Christmas Tree Wish List

This was a fun craft, I got the idea off of Pinterest when I saw a few variations of this. I decided to make a project geared more towards my kids and include some shape and letter recognition in the project. You'll want to do a little prep before you have your kids sit down on this project at well, not much is required though.

Here's what you'll need:
Green paper
White paper
Scissors
Markers
Glitter (optional)
Glue sticks

Step One:
To prep this project I sat down and cut the green paper. I made circles in descending sizes, so I could get a "tree" shape. For HENRIK I made six circles, for THEODOR, I made seven. I made the first circle the first letter of their name so it was the smallest circle, in turn, the last letter of their name was for the largest circle.

Step Two:
I gave the boys plain white paper and glue sticks, and then I laid their circles out in order at the top of their page so they could see their name. I asked them to tell me the letters on each circle. Then we played a little game where I mixed them up and Henrik had to put the names back together in the correct order. (Having different sized circles helped here when he got stuck, though he does know how to spell his own name).

Step Three: 
I let the boys glue their circles to the paper, in order of course.

Step Four:

I had the boys use markers to draw the base of their tree by making a rectangle. 

Step Five:
After they had their tree made, I asked them to compare it to our tree. How was it similar? How was it different? I got a lot of responses, none of them were what I was expecting. "Our has branches, this one does not" "Ours is a triangle, this one is made of circles."It took a little bit and I had to do some prodding, but I finally got them to tell me that their tree wasn't decorated, don't get me wrong, I was WAY more impressed with their answers than the simple answer I was fishing for. I also got them to tell me that there wasn't anything under the tree they were making. Which is where we move on to the actual step. I asked them to draw pictures of things that they wanted to ask us for and things they wanted to ask Santa for.

 Here you will see that Henrik has drawn a large package with a bow on top, a small package for a car and a train track for a Santa Train. 

Step Six:

I asked them to decorate their tree and they were very excited about this! But, because I didn't want them to color over the letters on the tree that made up their name, I asked them to use glitter so that it would be shiny like the lights on our tree. It got pretty messy, but they were WAY more careful than I thought they would be. 

Step Seven:

Let them dry and shake them off so that you can have a wonderful keepsake for years to come, or send them off to Santa, but don't forget to make a copy first! I was really impressed with these, Theo even got excited when he could draw pictures of what he wanted under his tree, a train, a dinosaur and a car and Henrik actually took care when doing these pictures when normally I have a really hard time getting him to sit down and draw (unless it's on his terms). Before we hung them, Henrik got the blue marker and drew Santa's bag above his train track because of course Santa was going to leave a giant haul of presents for the boys :) 

I think I will get a lot of joy doing this project with them each year, and as they grow, I'll have them write their own names, maybe change up the shapes, and see how their drawings, wants and interests change as they grow.