Pine Cone Christmas Tree

Hey, Future Ticia 2025, updating this absolutely ancient Homeschool Christmas lesson from back when the kids were in 2nd grade, but this could be for any early elementary project. I now return you to Past Ticia 2014, but I’ll pop back in with comments from time to time. I’d told everyone on Facebook today was going to be my volcano post, and then we made these to post on Friday, and I couldn’t wait, so I switched the days of the posts.

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Back when I was teaching second grade, one of the students gave me Froggy’s Best Christmas.  I read it and thought it was adorable.  Fast forward a few years, and I love it even more because of the love of giving it teaches you, and receiving with a thankful heart.

After rereading the story for the millionth time, I told my kids we were going to make a Christmas tree for their toys.  They were immediately right on board with that. I love that my kids are still into toys and decorating their rooms for Christmas (though at times it can be tiring)

This also meant I got some seriously good cleaning out of them because I said we couldn’t paint until the floor was clean.  You never saw them move so fast.

Supplies for step 1 of the Pine Cone Christmas Tree

Pine Cones (I was lucky and my MIL brought me 3 giant pine cones from a trip up to Wisconsin, otherwise I’d be buying them),Green poster paint (and yes, I buy bottles this big, Future Ticia 2025 comments that after a certain point buying giant bottles mean they stick around forever, I don’t know when that time is), Paint Brush Assortment (I find it helps to have a wide variety of paintbrushes for projects)

Here’s my artistic shot of the kids painting.  I’ve grown to like these because it gives you really good detail of how they’re doing it.  It’s going to take a lot of paint to get these well covered.

Of course, it’s still fun to see them all painting together.  I refilled that little bowl several times, and I now need to buy more green paint.

If you don’t end up with your entire tree painted, that’s all good, it’ll just be the brown of the branches peeking through.  Besides, by the time they finish with step 2, not much is left to be seen.

While you’re waiting for the pine cones to dry, go for a walk and find a frog, and be very amused.

Supplies for step 2 of the Pine Cone Christmas Tree:

Pom Poms (one of my best craft buys ever, we use them for so many games), Christmas Yarn (this is the closest I could find to what they are, it’s kind of like a garland, and the package is not that helpful a description to type in), oh, and obviously the pine cone you painted earlier

 

I don’t really have any good close-up shots of this step, because the kids had so much fun and were happily talking the entire time.  The garland yarn drapes very well around the tree, and looks very festive.

You could choose to glue the pom poms in (and that would be a wise choice if you still have kids who put things in their mouths), but I wanted my kids to be able to rearrange and redecorate their tree.

They’ve already made plans for where they’re going to put their pine cone Christmas trees (I like how the phrase sounds in my head as I type it: pine cone Christmas tree, it’s kind of musical, I so need a pot of hot tea right now).  The boys are planning on decorating homes for their favorite toys.  Princess is debating between putting it in her doll house and in the home she made for her most recent stuffed animal she’s received.

I think my kids have a stuffed animal addiction.

All in all, I think our pine cone Christmas trees turned out quite well.  I only wish I’d had one more pine cone, so I could make one for myself.  I just had to content myself with watching the kids do it.

More great Christmas ideas

• Homemade wrapping paper
• Sneakily Educational Stocking Stuffers
• Gingerbread Pirates
• When Santa lost his Ho Ho ho
• Stocking Stuffers to promote learning