Draw Santa Step-by-Step

       Progressive drawings are for beginners. Exercises like these teach more than fun! Young students learn that shapes make up larger drawings or can be found inside of larger drawings. They also learn to take directions, to watch and be patient and to solve problems through a series of smaller steps.

Santa Claus is so round and jolly. Make him a part of a larger drawing so that students may expand their thinking. Encourage them to add more details to their drawings and to color in the spaces as they like!

More Santa Claus Themed Crafts:

• Color a nostalgic portrait of Santa Claus for a Christmas Calendar
• "Santa Claus is coming to town" coloring page 
• Read aloud "Long Ago Christmas" from O'Brien's Pioneer Memories
  

Cut a Christmas Tree Border or Chain

       Download and print out the pattern below. The dotted lines indicate where the image will be folded to continue the tree silhouette seamlessly after it is unfolded. The number of images "linked" together in one continuous chain is determined by the length of the paper being cut. Use a very thin paper to make your cutting easier. Cut away the areas indicated by the design. (see image above and read text on the pattern below. This paper-cut may be used as a border around a Christmas bulletin board in a classroom or as a paper chain for the Christmas tree if you like.

Christmas Tree Chain Pattern

More Christmas Tree Themed Crafts:

• Kids can cut and paste a heart-shaped Christmas Tree
• Make a Popsicle stick Christmas tree ornament 
• Color a Christmas tree for your dolls and paste on the toys for decoration
  

Draw Christmas things using a grid...

        The following illustrated Christmas toys may be duplicated larger, smaller, or the same size by the use of a grid drawing system. Read about Enlarging and Reducing Pictures Here. After learning this method you can use these pictures as patterns for ornaments, artwork or for making a picture with them. Illustrations include: a rocking horse, drum, ball, football, wheelbarrow, Noah's ark, wooden tree, sail boat, candy cone, trumpet, sled, book and lamb on wheels.

• "Mad Cat" Bench for Children uses a grid system to transfer a pattern.
• Swinging Arm Dolls, a Lighthouse stool, a bucking bronco rocker, and a pig shaped stepping-stool all use this grid system for transferring patterns.
• 10 Free Woodcut Patterns for Tree Ornaments uses a grid system for transferring images.

Teaching students to transfer images by drafting a grid and making comparisons
reinforces many math and artistic skills.

Craft Santa's Workshop Game

        Here is a game that you can make and play with your friends. All the materials needed are easy to collect around the house. This is a kind of fishing game and is fun to play on winter evenings.

Directions: 

1. First get a cardboard box about 10x12 inches in size or larger.
2. Turn it upside down and cut 12 little slits in it with a knife. Space out the cuts evenly.
3. Next fasten the paper edge around the top. Cutting it to look like the village roof tops shown in the picture above.
4. You can cover this silhouette using construction paper.
5. Cut out the toys with numbered tags after coloring these. Slip the number side of each toy through the slits in the cardboard box half way leaving the tops sticking out.
6. Attach a paper clip to the tops of each toy.
7. Make the fishing poles using wooden sticks or dowels with string tied to one end only. Attaching a hook or magnet.
8. Additional toys may be made by cutting images from catalogs or Christmas advertisements in the mail.

To Play The Game:

• Each player has to take turns fishing for a toy by either hooking it through the paper clip or by using a magnet to lift the toys from the box slits.
• For every toy retrieved from "Santa's village workshop" that player gets one point.
• If two toys with the same number are pulled up then that player receives two extra points instead of only one.
• The player having the most points after fishing for all the paper toys wins the game.

More Christmas Games to Play:

• Guess the Gifts Puzzle and Fill In The Blanks
• A Puzzling Chimney
• Play Santa's Fortune Teller Puzzle 

Color a Christmas Poem Book

        Trim the Christmas tree below with the illustrated ornaments below after coloring and cutting them out. Use the printable cover for Christmas poems to decorate the front of your book. We have many Christmas poems for students to include inside their book of poetry at our Belsnickle Blog and also our Doll Blog Here.

Students can color the tree green before pasting ornaments on top.

Color, cut and paste these Christmas ornaments on to the pine tree above,
turning it into a Christmas tree! There are so many ornament types here:
angels, bells, birds, stars, candy canes, drums, horns, houses, soldiers and 
snowmen!

Snow Baby Gift Tags

        Below are "snow babies" for students to color as they wish, cut out and paste to their packages this Christmas. Snow babies have a long history in our country. 

• Read more about where they come from and what they are here. 
• See how to craft a traditional snow baby for the Christmas tree on this post.
  

Six snow babies per printable for Christmas gift tags.

Star Templates for Your Classroom

        "Stars, either cut from cardboard and covered with gold or silver paper, or cut from construction paper, and attached to black thread, may be hung in the windows, used on the Christmas tree, or suspended over the sand table showing a Christmas scene."

• Older students can learn to wrap flat Japanese temari for the Christmas tree.
• Read about Froebel Stars and watch a video by Jo Nakashima
• I discovered Scandinavian Star Curl Ornaments at an estate sale...

Star templates in five sizes for the classroom.