Coffee Filter Christmas Tree Ornaments

These coffee filter Christmas tree ornaments are so fun and easy for toddlers and preschoolers to make using paper coffee filters and a few craft gems and jewels.

Not only will young children enjoy the creative process for these pretty ornaments, this craft teaches kids about water absorption and colour blending, and strengthens fine motor skills as well.

You may also like: 6 “Christmas Tree” Crafts for Preschoolers.

The hooligans love using craft jewels to add shimmer and shine to their Christmas crafts. I love offering them at craft time because they give the kids’ fine motor skills a work-out.

This is our second coffee filter craft in less than a week!  Last week we made these Ballerina Christmas Ornaments using the same process.

Supplies:

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• ice cube tray or small containers
• food colouring and/or liquid watercolours (in varying shades of green and blue)
• coffee filters
• craft jewels
• paint brush
• glue
• hole punch
• thread for hanging

* To contain messes and spills we worked on a plastic table cloth.  The ice cube tray was placed in a baking pan to prevent it from being tipped.

Coffee Filter Christmas Tree Instructions:

I put a little water in an ice cube tray.  You don’t need much; you want your colours to be intense.

I added a few drops of food colouring or a squirt of liquid watercolour to each section of the tray.  We used different shades of greens and blues for each section. In some sections I added two colours so the hooligans could stir them together and see some colour-mixing.

When they’d finished stirring, the fun began.

Each hooligan dripped, brushed and tapped the coloured water onto their coffee filters.  Some chose to crumple their filters up and dunk them into the water.

If the colours weren’t intense enough, I would add a few drops of food colouring directly onto the wet coffee filters so the kids could swish those around.

Drying the filters:

You can lay the filters out on a baking sheet to air dry them, or do like we did, and hold them under the heat of a hair-dryer to speed up the process.

Shaping and decorating our coffee filter trees:

Once dry, fold your filter, acordion-style, in half and then in half again.  Don’t aim for perfection here.  It’s nice to see the layers at the bottom of your “Christmas tree”.

Add a little glue between the layers to hold everything in place.  Now it’s time to add some bling!

The hooligans brushed their coffee filters with glue, and added their jewels to the tree.  I love how our one year old preferred to add her glue directly to the jewels, and place each one individually exactly where she wanted it. Manipulating these tiny jewels provides such a great fine-motor work-out for little fingers!

When the jewels had dried in place, I punched a hole in the top of each tree, and added a silver thread for hanging.

Aren’t  they pretty?

More Holiday Crafts for Kids:

• 10 Easy Christmas crafts for Toddlers 
• Fine Motor Christmas Crafts for Preschoolers
• Popsicle Stick Christmas Ornaments for Kids to Make

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