by Chanell Gautreaux

Created on: December 08, 2009

Little kids love Christmas and creating holiday crafts just adds to the excitement and anticipation they already feel looking forward to the day they will get to open all their presents.  Christmas balls are a simple and economic decorative craft any child with basic motor skills can make requiring very few supplies.

Purchase Christmas balls made from plastic or other shatter resistant material rather than glass ones.  Assemble an assortment of items to use for covering the balls such as glitter, beads, lightweight construction paper, gift wrap, colored tissue, bits of cloth or recycle pages from old magazines or toy catalogs. 

Depending on how adept your preschoolers are with their hand eye coordination you can use liquid glue, paste or glue sticks to stick the decorative material onto the Christmas ball.  Rest the balls in a shallow bowl or on top of a cup while working to keep them from rolling around.  If covering a Christmas ball with glitter, for example, a bowl can be used to catch glitter that is carefully applied using a shaker bottle or the glitter could be placed in a bowl and the ball dipped into it after applying glue.

For colorful Christmas balls with a stained glass look decoupage the surfaces with bits of torn or colored tissue.  Apply school glue with a paint brush to a small area of the ball (or use a glue stick) and lay the tissue strips on the ball overlapping each other.  Allow the covered balls to dry over several hours.  Alternatively, create a textured mosaic effect by crumpling bits of tissue into balls and gluing them to the surface of the Christmas ball. 

Colored tissue is an inexpensive material that goes a long way and is easy for little hands to handle.  It can be torn before applying allowing preschoolers who are not yet adept with using scissors to use a little or a lot of a particular color.  The thinness of the paper makes it easy to adhere to the Christmas ball with just a small amount of glue and the sheerness of the paper allows for color blending.  The color in the tissue will bleed once it is wet however, so use caution and protect surfaces and clothing.

Decoupage balls can also be made with fabric, stickers or pictures cut from magazines as well.  The denser the fabric or material used the more glue (alternatively try using paste) and drying time you will need.  Textured and mosaic effects can be achieved with beads or foam shapes or for Christmas snowballs use cotton balls.  You should always make a sample project to test the difficulty and time needed to complete the activity ahead of crafting with preschoolers.

Your preschoolers will have loads of fun making their Christmas balls.  They will be excited and proud to show off their creations to their parents and even prouder to hang them on the tree.

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