Nature Ornaments
🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 🤸 Fine & Gross Motor Skills — The physical work of real projects — hammering, rolling, cutting, digging, sewing — builds both fine and gross motor development in an authentic, purposeful context that motivates full physical engagement.
- 🤝 Collaboration — Projects done with a parent, sibling, or group require negotiating roles, dividing tasks, and integrating different contributions — developing the collaborative skills that every complex adult endeavor requires.
- 💡 Design Thinking — Imagining what a project will look like before building it, adjusting the design when it doesn't work, and refining until satisfied introduces the iterative design thinking cycle that underlies engineering, art, and innovation.
- 💪 Persistence & Resilience — Multi-step projects that take real time and encounter real obstacles build the persistence and resilience that research consistently identifies as more predictive of success than intelligence or talent.
Make inexpensive and personal Christmas ornaments with your preschoolers. These ornaments are quick and simple. They also add a childlike touch to the Christmas tree. Preschoolers love adding their special touch to Christmas decorations!
What You Will Need
Collected items from outside, small enough to be made into ornaments
String for hanging the ornament
Ribbon for decorating of the ornament
Glue (optional)
How to Make It
Take your preschooler outside and collect his or her favorite objects from nature
Items may include pretty rocks, interesting pine cones, unique sticks, or small branches
Tie a ribbon around the item, put a dot of glue on the ribbon to ensure sticking (if needed)
Hang the item on the Christmas tree, preferably where your preschooler can view the ornament when he or she looks at the tree!
Make it More Challenging
Help your preschooler write or paint the year on the ornament! Nature ornaments make simple gifts (often favored by Grandparents)
Another idea that can make this activity challenging is doing a simple introduction to adjectives while collecting the items for ornaments. Ask your preschooler how the items feel, look, and smell while he or she is collecting the items.
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Helpful Tips for Parents
- The messiest projects often produce the best results. Sand castles, papier-mâché, painting, and clay all require acceptance of chaos during the process.
- Break large projects into small, completable steps. Young children need frequent wins — visible progress — to sustain engagement with a multi-day project.
- Include children in the planning phase: "What do we need? How will we do it? What might go wrong?" This develops project thinking and executive function simultaneously.
- Skill-building projects (learning to tie shoes, building a birdhouse, planting a garden) develop capability and pride that decorative projects don't.
- Gift projects (making something for someone else) produce higher-quality work and more sustained effort than self-directed projects — the recipient provides motivational context.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should adults do projects alongside preschoolers or separately?
Both modes are valuable at different times. Side-by-side making (adult working on their own project while the child works on theirs) models adult creative engagement and normalizes making as a lifelong activity — not just a childhood activity. Collaborative projects (adult and child making one thing together) build shared memory, teach specific techniques, and produce a sense of joint accomplishment. Avoid adult take-over of child projects, where the adult makes most of the decisions and does most of the work with the child watching. The child's project should be primarily the child's work.
How do I teach a preschooler to clean up after a project?
Cleanup is part of the project — establish this from the first session. End each session 10 minutes before you need to stop for cleanup time. Make cleanup as specific as possible: "Brushes go in the cup, lids go back on the paint jars, newspaper goes in the recycling." Specificity prevents the vague "clean up" command that children correctly don't know how to execute. Stay present during cleanup — a child cleaning up alone quickly loses motivation; a child cleaning up alongside an adult stays engaged. Acknowledge completed cleanup: "The space is ready for the next project."
Related reading: See also our cooking projects guide and our salt dough projects for more ideas on this topic.
Questions to Ask Your Child
Use these open-ended prompts to extend the learning during or after the activity:
- "What was your favorite part, and what made it special?"
- "What would you do differently next time?"
- "Can you teach me how to do the part you liked best?"
- "What did you notice while we were doing this?"
- "What does this remind you of from somewhere else in your life?"
- "If you could change one thing about this, what would it be?"
There are no right or wrong answers to any of these questions. The goal is to keep the conversation going, model curious thinking, and give your child practice putting their experience into words.
