toddler activities: fingerprint christmas tree gift tags

Happy Wednesday all!  Hope yours is going well.  I’m finally feeling better for the most part and our house is slowly on the mend too.  It’s my hope that we get a Christmas tree tonight and begin putting up some Christmas decorations.  Christmas is just 2 weeks away now.  Crazy.

This year we’ve been a bit more ahead on figuring our Christmas gifts.  A bit, not a lot.   We’re doing a mixture of purchased and homemade.  It’s not only fun to do homemade gifts, but I think thoughtful too!  I wish I could share the gift I’ve made before Christmas, but then that would ruin the surprise.

Here’s a little sneak peek into my gift wrapping theme this year.

I purchased the red kraft paper from the dollar store, string from Joann Fabric, picked up a super cheap remnant of burlap from Fabric Depot and have been using some ribbon I already have in the house saved from previous Christmases.  In addition Hunter and I made some super cute Christmas tree name tags!

Aren’t they adorable?  It’s such a simple project.  Here’s how we made them.

First I found a tree I liked.  This was probably the hardest part.  I had a particular look in mind, but never found anything like it.  Then I tried to make one and it just wasn’t pretty.  Then I finally found this one somewhere online.

I pasted the image into word a bunch of times at the size I wanted and printed about 50 tags.  Overkill?  A bit.

Hand cut them out (a good timer killer in a waiting room, without a kiddo to watch), but you could totally use a cutting tool to get them all the same size and with squared corners.  You could add the single hole punch to the top now, or after the fun fingerprinting.

The first try making these wasn’t at the best time – right before bed when he clearly didn’t want to do it.  Also, done on the floor.  Bad idea.  A couple days later we sat at the table after his nap and had a good old time fingerprinting the trees.  I definitely had to be very hands on with this.  I’d take his little index finger, press it on the ink pad and we’d count out each time he made a fingerprint.  Hunter’s been loving counting, so it worked out well.  We stuck with green on the tree and switched to yellow for the star.  You could easily do tons of colors, but since we had a lot of them to get through (we probably made 20-25) I wanted to keep a good rhythm going.  I gave Hunter a couple of his own cards he could stamp and be messy with.

I’m sure the older a kid is, the less mama intervention would be needed, but still, at 18 months this was super fun and they’re totally unique.  Plus they add a special touch to our gifts.

Are you into Christmas crafts?  What are some fun Christmassy ones to do with toddlers?

Heather

Looking for more toddler activities?  Check out our leaf week crafts!