Simple Christmas Garland for Kids


A super simple Christmas garland for kids to make. Use only one item from around the house.

Some of my favorite memories as a kid involved decorating our house for the holidays. Popcorn strings for the tree, oranges spiked with cloves for the dining room table, Christmas countdown chains!  There must have been a latent homemaker in my little kid heart from the beginning.  And now our girls are loving the process of getting ready for the holidays with decorations and activities leading up to the big day!

We do a number of things to try to get our house and our hearts ready to celebrate Christmas.  It has been such fun to create traditions with our girls.  One of our favorite things is our Christmas book basket.  I put it out on December 1st for the kids to dig into all month.  And every few days, I try to come up with an activity that goes with one of the books in the basket.

Our latest activity is actually based on two books that are both about getting ready for Jesus: Who Is Coming to Our House by Joseph Slate and Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson.

Super Simple Christmas Garland for kids - Activity Inspired by the book Who is Coming to Our House?

In Who Is Coming to Our House, the animals are getting ready for a visitor.  The refrain: “‘Who is coming to our house?” ‘Someone, Someone,’ says Mouse,” punctuates the contributions of the animals to prepare the stable for the arrival of a special guest.  I like it because it shows the girls that we can ALL do something to give to Jesus – however small.

And Bear Stays Up for Christmas is all about preparing Bear’s cave for a spectacular Christmas celebration while attempting to keep Bear from going into hibernation.  I like it for a number of reasons, but the girls love it because it features a Wren!

Since the girls are just as excited as the characters in these books about getting ready for Christmas and we just got out our trees, I came up with a super simple way for them to decorate the tree.  They loved the project (even though they needed a little help) and they love(!) showing anyone who walks into the house their beautiful decorations.  Here’s the simple way to create a paper garland with kids.

And since I have to be open and honest here…I am kind of obsessed with making them myself!

What you need:

  • paper lunch sacks
  • scissors
  • tape (if desired)

Procedure:

  1. Cut off the bottom and top of the bag.  You will want to cut off the very bottom of the bag.  You can leave the top portion on. But if your bags have a cut at the top of one side, you may want to remove it, so you have a clean rectangle.
  2. Fold the bag in half and in half again.  You will have a small rectangle.
  3. Cut shapes and designs out of the folded bag, making sure not to cut completely across the folded parts of the paper.  Little hands may need help with this task, because it is hard to cut through the paper!christmas-garland-cutting-who-is-coming-to-our-house
  4.  Once your kid has cut out as much as she would like, help her to carefully open the folds.  And then carefully find the inside fold of one side of the bag (along the long side) and cut the remaining bag along the fold.  Open the bag fully. See the large length of “garland” it creates?!
  5. If desired you can string together a bunch of these paper bag garlands by carefully taping them together.

We really like them on our Christmas tree!  The girls are always happy when we do a project that is beautiful enough to be displayed!

A super simple Christmas garland for kids to make. Use only one item from around the house.

This holiday season, I am partnering with a number of awesome bloggers to bring you 10 days of Christ Focused Christmas Activities Inspired by Books!  There are some really fun, simple ideas to point your little ones to Jesus the season.  Make sure to follow along, you can take a look at the schedule over at Inspired by Familia blog.

Simple Christmas Garland for kids, part of 10 Days of Christ Focused Christmas Activities Inspired by Books

Here are our fabulous bloggers: Inspired by Family, Meaningful Mama, Teaching Mama, Beautiful Messy Motherhood, Happy Home Fairy, Simple.Home.Blessings, The Chaos and the Clutter, Creative Family Fun, True Aim Education and Sunshine Whispers!

A super simple Christmas garland for kids to make. Use only one item from around the house.


This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Mom

    So pretty and creative!

Leave a Reply