Mini Felt Christmas Tree: Busy Bag for Toddlers & Preschoolers

Looking for a fun way to keep little hands occupied this season?  These DIY Felt Christmas Tree busy bags are just the thing!  They are a mini-version of our bigger, popular felt Christmas tree that you can take with you on the go.  Perfect for Christmas busy bags, teaching shapes, patterns, and colors to toddlers and preschoolers, and best of all, it’s a quiet activity they can do independently!

I know Thanksgiving is this week and we fully intend on celebrating fully, but even so, Christmas is in the air!

About a week or so ago, we pulled out many of our Christmas decorations just to have a look and get organized for decorating this year.  We got rid of some things and added some new things and I’m excited to officially begin decorating for Christmas soon (aka THIS WEEKEND)!

The boys were excited to see their felt Christmas tree and all their ornaments come out of the box!  I made it a few years ago when our oldest was little.  Mostly to give him a fun Christmas activity that he could play with as creatively as he wanted.  Secondarily, the Christmas tree was an [only somewhat successful] attempt at keeping him distracted from pulling ornaments off of our family tree.

RELATED: GRAB INSTRUCTIONS TO MAKE YOUR OWN, EASY DIY FELT CHRISTMAS TREE HERE!

Seeing how excited they both were to see their Christmas tree, I thought it would be fun to create mini-versions for some fun, independent Christmas themed busy bags this year.  And so, we have mini felt Christmas trees and I’m glad to say that so far, they have been a hit!

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Felt Christmas Tree Busy Bags for Toddlers & Preschoolers

These felt Christmas tree busy bags are perfect for both toddlers and preschoolers.  For reference – my oldest is 4 and youngest is just shy of 2 years old.

How to Use These Busy Bags for Preschoolers:

My four year old has been using his Christmas tree busy bag to:

• Sort colors of ornaments
• Match shapes
• Create patterns on his Christmas trees

All of these are really great preschool math skills that are good for him to be practicing and repeating.  Not to mention, it is SO MUCH FUN to see how creative he gets decorating his trees!

How to Use These Busy Bags for Toddlers:

There are LOTS of great reasons to use felt with toddlers.  Mostly, it’s safe for them to play with independently and when I’m trying to keep my eyes on both boys, this is very important to me.

Some other great reasons we love this activity for toddlers:

• Practice talking about shapes and colors
  • learning to identify colors and shapes
• Develop fine motor skills by picking up and placing each ornament on the tree
• Increase spatial awareness arranging the ornaments and seeing how they can fit on the tree
• Creative freedom to arrange ornaments however they wish – there is not a wrong way to decorate their felt Christmas tree and the pieces can easily be moved and rearranged as desired.

How to Make a Felt Christmas Tree Busy Bag

These are a great afternoon or nap time project.  I think I made these in about 15-20 minutes tops.  All you need is colorful felt and a pair of scissors!  AND, I’ve made a free printable template you can use to make your Christmas tree and star to make it even easier for you!

Supplies

• Green + colorful felt
  • This felt package on Amazon is a GREAT deal if you want to have lots of different colors of felt.  The squares are 6 in. x 6in. so they’re great for these ornaments.  You can also easily use the green pieces to maker your Christmas trees.  These are a little bigger if you want something bigger for your trees.
• Sharp scissors
• Printable Christmas Tree Template

Directions

• Print out your Christmas Tree template and trace onto green felt.
  • Alternatively, you can fold the green felt in half and free cut a Christmas tree shape.
• Cut out a star for your tree from yellow felt (or any color, let’s be real)
• Cut out smaller ornaments for your tree.
  • You can get as fancy or as simple with these as you like.  I chose to do basic shapes – square, diamond, circle, and triangle so we could practice shapes with my youngest, but there are no rules to what shapes you make your ornaments.

And that’s it!  It’s time to get decorating your Christmas trees!  No glue because felt sticks to itself so your little one can arrange and rearrange ornaments to their heart’s content with almost no mess!