Last year we didn’t do much with the advent season because Mikayla wasn’t quite ready yet. This year though, I knew I at least wanted to introduce her to the season. So, we set out to make a toddler friendly advent wreath. by toddler friendly, I mean one that doesn’t have real flames. Mikayla does pretty good around flames and candles, considering we use them often due to all our power outages, but we still wanted to be better safe than sorry! This wreath took maybe ten minutes to put together and looks pretty good if I do say so myself!
To make you will need:
- Paper plate
- Construction paper (green, pink, purple and orange)
- Glue (we used white glue and it worked great)
- 4-5 empty toilet paper tubes
We started by wrapping the toilet paper tubes in construction paper (one pink and three purple). I think we will use a real candle in the center for the white candle, but if not I can wrap a paper towel tube in white like the others so it will be a little taller. Next trace your toddlers hand several times on green paper. I actually traced three times and then folded paper so I was cutting multiple hands out at a time. I think we ended up using 12 hands. After cutting a hole in the center of the paper plate (if using fake candle in the center you may want to leave this as is so you can glue on top), glue cut out hands around edge of plate, overlapping if you choose. The plate was looking kind of bare in the middle so we took our scraps of green, tore up and glued in the middle. The next step is to glue the candles in the center of the plate. Finally, make four flames out of orange paper to glue on the candles as you discuss their meaning.
Easy, toddler friendly and it looks nice (if I do say so myself)! Now we just need to work on a toddler friendly discussion of the meaning for advent. Any suggestions?
