Popsicle Stick Christmas Trees
Three sticks, a triangle, and as much decorating as they have patience for.
- Age
- Ages 3–8
- Prep
- 5 min
- Play time
- 20 min
- Mess
- Low
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Where
- Indoor
Why kids love this
Three sticks make a triangle and a triangle is a tree  that jump is obvious to an adult and genuinely delightful to a four-year-old. Once the shape is glued they will decorate it for as long as you let them. It is also small and finished quickly, which suits a child who abandons anything that takes more than one sitting.
What you'll need
- Three popsicle sticks per tree
- Green paint
- Glue that dries clear
- Sequins, buttons, pom-poms or beads
- A star sticker or yellow paper
- String for hanging
How to do it
-
Paint the three sticks green on one side and let them dry.
-
Glue two sticks into an upside-down V, then lay the third across the bottom to close the triangle.
-
Press the joins and leave it for a minute or two to hold.
-
Decorate the triangle  sequins, buttons, dots of paint, whatever is to hand.
-
Add a star at the top and glue a loop of string to the back.
Make it easier
Glue the triangles yourself the night before. The joining is the only fiddly part and a pre-made triangle turns this into pure decorating.
Make it harder
Ask for a triangle where all three sticks are the same length showing  it means overlapping them in a particular order, and working that out is a real puzzle.
Other ways to play it
- Write a name across the bottom stick and it is a gift tag.
- Stack three triangles of decreasing size for a much grander tree.
- Leave the sticks unpainted and decorate with white for a winter version.
What they're learning
Making a triangle from three separate pieces is early geometry done with the hands. Placing small decorations precisely is a pincer-grip task.
This is the smallest of our kids Christmas crafts and the one most likely to get made four times in a row. Each tree takes about ten minutes and uses three lolly sticks, so a bag of a hundred lasts the whole of December.
They work as tree decorations, as gift tags with a name written across the trunk, or glued to a folded card. That flexibility is why it sits in our Christmas activities for kids collection rather than only in the ornaments one.
The glue needs a minute to grab before the decorating starts. That minute is worth waiting out, because a triangle that comes apart mid-decoration is the one thing that upsets anybody here.
If you are working through a list of Christmas crafts for kids this month, put this one late  it is the one that survives a tired afternoon. Most crafts for kids need a clear table and a clean start; this needs three sticks and a chair. That is what makes it one of the easy Christmas crafts for kids we come back to when nobody has the energy for anything bigger.