Paper Christmas Wish Tree

Just 10 pages of yellow A4 paper and about 10 sheets of Green A4 paper and voila…. a beautiful Paper Christmas tree.

It was such a hit in the classroom today – I love my colleagues idea of adding stars with childrens wishes on and doesn’t it look amazing! Our room is starting to feel Christmassy!

Green paper chains

There are three stages. First is to make some paper chains out of green paper. I simply cut 2cm wide strips from the A4 sheet (across the short width). Using a pritt stick the children made paperchains. As a guide they made them the same height as themselves. They really enjoyed this and it meant we could talk about being longer or shorter which we have been doing a lot of recently. (PS have you seen my Christmas paper cutting exercise for Free on my download site?)

Folded Paper Star

I first saw this star when a colleague made it last year – I instantly had to make one for myself so I sat down with it and worked it out. I have since found it in several places on Pinterest but I haven’t found any with really clear instructions so I am doing a really basic guide here.

You will need six pieces of A4 paper. For the star I have used yellow. You can also do them in white to be a snowflake.

Take one piece of paper and fold the corner up til it meets the other side forming an equilateral triangle.

Trim the paper so it is a triangle (if you open the triangle up you will have a square).

Fold the triangle in half again.

You will now have a smaller tirnagle shape and the paper will be doubles.

The key is to cut pararell to the longest edge. Start at the open side and stop just short of the folded edge (about 1cm)

Now unfold your paper and it should look like this.

Turn the square over and join the middle two triangles together. I used prit stick at this point as my staper wouldn’t fit in!

Turn the whole thing over again and then join the next two together – I use a stapler here to make it more secure.

Turn over again and repeat with the next ones.

And again and you should end up with something like this.

Make 6….

I lay them out like above so that they are all pointing the same way. Next gather them all together holding all 6 together by one end.

Secure these ends together with Staples – I use three to make it extra secure.

Now each section needs to be secured together. Hopefully you can see where they come together natrally – simly add a staple to secure them.

Et Voila! Not bad for a few bits of yellow paper and should be achievable age 5 years or more with a little support. If younger it might be more of a joint job 🙂

Paper wish stars

Tis part is a good montessori activity using the insets for design. If you haven’t got insets you could use another stencil or make one out of cardboard.

First draw two triangles.

Then caefully cut them out

Glue triangles together one pointing up and one down to form a star.

When the star was glued together the children wrote their Christmas wish on. They were not wishes for what they want as a present – but for something for other people. Freya’s was “I wish to be with my family” – love that girl!

Once they have the message on punch a hole in the top point and secure to the tree. We used some nice gold ribbon.

Put is all together and this is what you get – children can now make them independently hopefully having been shown once. I did have to help but the tree on to the door though.