Simple Q-Tip Painted Christmas Tree

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Q-Tips are one of my favorite painting tools. Christmas trees all lit up for Christmas are possibly my daughter’s favorite thing ever. This is a fun Q-tip Christmas tree craft that isn’t too structured but offers kids the opportunity to work on fine motor skills while getting to decorate a Christmas tree just the way they want. Although my daughter dotted the q-tip encourage your child to use the q-tip however they see fit.

Q-Tip Christmas Tree Craft

1. Gather your materials. You will need some construction paper in green and another in black. White and various colors of paint, scissors and a glue stick. You may also want some extra sheets of paper for extra exploration after.
2. Start by painting the snow scene by using only white paint on black paper. While it looks like snow to us, to my 2-year-old, it was just polka dots and that is cool!
3. As they paint the background, cut the green paper into a Christmas tree.
4. While her dots dried, I gave her a 2nd piece of paper to paint. She chose her hands as the tools this time. With toddlers especially, always have extras on hand of everything. Emotions are high and their hands don’t always do what they want and art time should be fun, not upsetting. I like this activity because it balances a little structure with a lot of open-ended.
5. After the background is mostly dry, add glue to the tree.
6. Glue it on to the background.
7. Add colored paint.  When we paint with Q-tips I like using the lids of the paint jars as mini paint palates. You don’t need much paint and you don’t waste much doing it this way. Just make sure you have one Q-Tip per color.
8. Let your Q-tip Christmas tree craft dry and grab another extra sheet to finger paint some more.