DIY christmas card craft for toddlers, preschool and kindergarten
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Never leave your young children unattended when working with paint, even non-toxic children’s paint, to prevent them from swallowing paint.
This DIY Christmas card craft is perfect for younger children, but can surely be enjoyed by older kids and adults as well. Create an adorable, unique and personal Christmas tree card in no time and with very few materials. It really is a very quick and easy DIY Christmas project for children, which makes it a great Christmas activity for preschool and kindergarten classes as well.
My kids love finger painting and then gifting their creations to family and their friends. So I thought it would be an adorable idea to have the kids make DIY Christmas cards this year. Even tho Christmas is still a while away, I am already excited and so are my kids. I also wanted to get this started early since we will need to make quite a few cards. My two-year-old and I started with this Christmas tree design and will be adding more designs over the next few weeks. Subscribe with your email address below to not miss out on more DIY Christmas craft projects.
Materials you need
Finger paint, colors of your choice (to make your card extra christmassy use seasonal colors, like green and red)
Paint tray or disposable plastic plate
Painting apron or old shirt(optional): If you do not have a painting apron for your kid yet, and you are doing crafts regularly, I highly recommend you get one. It will keep their clothes clean, especially when working with glue and paint and you don’t have to worry about getting the stains out. Let’s be honest, who remembers to stain treat before throwing clothes in the washing machine?! I certainly forget 99% of the time. Our apron was in the wash when we did this Christmas craft so we used our backup ‘painting shirt’.
How to make your Christmas card
1. To make your card base, take a regular white card stock paper and fold it in half. Set aside.
2. On a new piece of white card stock paper, draw the outline of a Christmas tree. The tree has to be smaller than the front of your folded card. Don’t worry about the outline too much, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
3. Cut out your Christmas tree. This is a great opportunity for preschoolers to practice their scissor skills.
4. Lay your cut out Christmas tree onto the front page of your card that you folded in step 1.
5. Prepare your paint. Squeeze a small amount of finger paint, in the colors of your (or your child’s choice), onto a paint tray. If you do not have a paint tray, you can use a disposable plastic plate or a piece of aluminum foil. I like to use seasonal colors, like green, white and red, but my two-year-old insisted on adding yellow as well. And all toddler moms out there know you gotta pick your battles with a two-year-old, so yellow paint it was.
6. Take your folded card stock with the Christmas tree cut-out on the front page and lay it in front of your toddler. During painting, you will have to fixate the Christmas tree cut-out a little with your fingers so it doesn’t move.
7. Let the painting begin. Have your child dip their finger into one finger paint color at a time and put finger prints all over the front of your card. Make sure your Christmas tree cut-out stays in place.
Make sure there are plenty of finger prints around the outline of the tree. This guarantees that the tree shape will be visible later.
If your child is not into finger prints you can also just let them smear the paint all over the card, always making sure the tree stays in place. We also covered our Christmas tree cutout in paint.
8. Once the entire front of your card is covered, remove the tree cut-out.
9. That’s it! You can add a ‘merry Christmas’ or anything you like to the inside of the tree shape, or just leave it blank. Write your Christmas wishes inside and you are done!
We glued the tree cut-out onto another folded piece of card stock and turned it into another card.
Looking for more Christmas fun? Take a look at these Christmas books for toddlers and holiday books for preschoolers and kindergarteners. Snuggle up with a hot chocolate and enjoy some quality time with your little one while teaching them everything about the season.
Enjoy doing this DIY Christmas card craft with your child during this holiday season and create some fun memories.
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