Make an adorable Christmas tree from your child’s handprints. This makes a nice decoration to put on a door, or on a classroom bulletin board.
- A lot of green construction paper
- A piece of brown construction paper (for the tree trunk)
- A piece of yellow construction paper (for the star)
- A large piece of brown paper (or use another color)
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Glue
- Optional – Glitter or glitter glue
- Optional – Paper ornaments (to glue on the tree)
Instructions
Trace the child’s hand on a piece of green construction paper. Cut out the hand print. Fold the wrist over.
Make a lot of paper paper hands (the number you’ll need depends on the size of your tree). If this is a class project, you may want to put each child’s name on his or her hand print.
A nice touch, suggested by Peter Hesselmann, is to have each child write a Christmas wish for themselves on one paper hand, and a Christmas wish for the world on the other. Peter also did not tell his students why they were making the hands; he put the tree up, which surprised and delighted them. Peter also had the teachers and staff each write a wish for the world on a circular piece of construction paper - these were used for baubles on the tree.
Draw a tree shape on a large piece of paper.
Cut out a small rectangle of dark brown paper (this will be the tree trunk).
Glue the rectangle below the tree.
Glue the hand prints together in a tree shape, gluing the folded part of the wrist to the background. Start at the bottom of the tree. Starting with the second row, make the fingers overlap the next hand a little bit.
Cut out a yellow star for the top of the tree. Glue it on the tree.
Write a Christmas message around the tree.
Optional: Decorate your tree with glitter, glitter glue, or paper ornaments.
You can also make the tree on a triangle shape (so there is no background showing).
