When Harrison and Alex were little (well, littler!), we used to make loads of Christmas decorations. In fact, most of our tree decorations were homemade at one point and they were lovely. We still have most of them now, and it’s lovely getting them out and having a look at them. I also know that their nannies and great nan loved having them on their tree.

In the past couple of years, life has been so busy that we haven’t made any, and that makes me sad. When they’re older, I want to be looking back at the progression from unidentifiable splodges of glue and glitter to something that looks like what it is meant to!

So, this year, we have decided to take part in the Kid Made Christmas Decorations series with Jen (and lots of other very talented bloggers and their children) from Mum in the Madhouse. It is, as it says, 30 days of decorations made by kids. It’s given us a bit of a kick up the bum to make some of our own, starting off with these super simple lolly stick Christmas trees. We made some of these years ago, and the kids loved them, so they were the obvious thing for us to start with. Plus, they’re super simple – perfect for when you need that quick wind-down activity.

Materials

Lolly sticks – 3 per tree (either green ones, or paint them!)

Glue (we used a low melt glue gun)

Embellishments (we used sticky back decorations)

Pipe cleaner

Instructions

If you have plain wooden lolly sticks, you need to either colour them in or paint them green and leave them to dry.

Pop a blob of glue at the end of each stick and arrange the lolly sticks in a triangle shape.

Once it has dried, decorate! Ben had lots of fun doing this. We used sparkly bow stickers and some Christmas foam shapes that had sticky backs so that he could do it completely independently. It was also fantastic fine motor skill practice for him, peeling the backs off and sticking them down.

Flip the trees over and twist a pipe cleaner into a loop shape and stick it down. You could also use string or wool to hang it from the tree, but pipe cleaners are a little more robust.

I think it looks pretty cool, don’t you?

Pop over to Jen’s blog to have a look at some of the fantastic decorations made by bloggers and their kids. I especially love these pine cone Christmas puddings!