Advent Wreath Craft for Kids

I've been crafting Advent wreaths with my preschool co-op, my own children, and, well, pretty much every Catholic child that I come in contact with! :-)

As I'm sure you can instantly tell, this advent wreath is child sized, and crafted with pink and purple birthday candles. This is a great way to have fun with kids for advent!

These wreaths can be made for about a dollar a piece. The Styrofoam circles I got 2/$1 at the Dollar Tree, along with the "wired pine". I cut the center of the circles out ahead of time with a seraded steak knife to make it a wreath shape. (Use caution when you do this please!) You can buy small pre-made Styrofoam wreaths at AC Moore for $1.50 each, but I needed several for my preschool co-op class. I also got enough red berries at the Dollar Tree for all the wreaths for just $1. The birthday candles came from my local grocery store for .99/box. Obviously, you need pink and purple, so you will need 2 boxes.

Have the children paint the wreaths green. They love this! I know you could start with floral foam which is already green, but that stuff is super crumbly and will make a big mess with small kids. It also won't be durable. It doesn't matter if they don't paint it perfectly, but try to encourage them to paint the inside and outside of the circle as well as the top. As you can see, we used foam brushes. I think foam brushes are especially handy for small children.

After painting, allow to dry.

The wired pine we used as kind of a lacing exercise. It's not glued at all, just wound around the wreaths and twisted together at the ends.

We let the kids squeeze on their own glue and stick on the clusters of berries. It's ok if they use a lot of glue - it will dry eventually! :-)

Because the regular Styrofoam is stiffer than floral foam, you can't stick the candles right in. First, poke the holes with a Philips head screw driver, and have the kids insert the candles themselves.

Here's one that I made where the pine stuff was all glued on top of the wreath with a glue gun. We're going to be using this as my class's advent wreath on our prayer table.

The kids in my class had such a great time making these! :-)

Here's Julian's. He is so proud of it!

You can substitute other Christmas greenary for the wired pine.
Just attach with glue.

Yes, these are working advent wreaths, so they can be lit. But please use caution and don't burn your children... or you teddy bear. ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'll see you back here on Monday with a very special (and unprecedented) Cyber Monday post!!! :-D Don't do any of your Catholic holiday shopping before then!!!

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