More Than Just Decorating

At Christmastime we have a little tree in our classroom that the children can decorate and undecorate as often as they'd like.  We typically have a few ornament making projects to offer over a few weeks, but the children are welcome to make their own ornaments at any time.
Besides being festive, there are solid reasons for children to make their own ornaments.  They have chances to express their creativity and fine tune their motor skills. 

Stringing beads is a developmental milestone, but let's face it, putting teeny beads on flimsy string is hard!  We use pipecleaners rather than string for beading.  It stays firm and then bends to any shape. 

We gave the children a variety of old Christmas greeting cards and some scissors and let them cut out images to make ornaments.  There are many levels of scissor skill development, but cutting out an image is one of the toughest. Some Bunnies can do it and others are still snipping.  No matter.  The opportunity and practice is what is important.