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Ornaments for Kids to Color and Sew

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Easy ornaments kids can make by coloring or sewing felt.

A Year of Picture Book Activities for Preschoolers
colored Christmas tree ornaments

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This week’s Virtual Book Club for Kids read is Merry Christmas Mouse! We love this series by Laura Numeroff. This particular book focuses on counting as Mouse adds ornaments to the tree. We are in the middle of a big move, so I thought it would be fun to share this old post featuring simple ornaments kids can make. These ornaments can be sewn or colored. You don’t even really need to know what you are doing to sew them! Older children can experiment with sewing beads on as ornaments to make the activity a bit more challenging. 

Ornaments Kids Can Make

I drew up some simple ornaments for the kids to color, printed them out, and handed them over. They traced the lines through onto the back of the printer paper so they could color both sides. Then we punched a hole in each ornament and added a bit of yarn to hang them on our tree. Very simple, and perfect for our very casually-decorated tree! We could have fancied them up with paint, glitter glue, or stickers, but the kids were happy with them as they were. We may still make some fancier ones between now and Christmas! I considered laminating them, but decided against it. If these tear, we’ll make some new ones.

child-sewn Christmas tree ornaments

The kids wanted to do some sewing as well, so I cut out some tree shapes from green felt, and handed them each a needle and thread. I had originally planned to have them stitch around the edges and stuff the middle, but decided two layers of felt were plenty thick – and, more importantly, if we weren’t stuffing, they could stitch wherever they liked! Can you guess which tree was sewn by which child?

Johnny hangs a Christmas tree ornament

They are all very proud of their ornaments – both the sewn ones and the colored ones. I added a loop of embroidery floss at the top of each sewn ornament, so they could hang from the tree. If I were doing this project with older children, I would probably give them beads or buttons to add as ornaments on their felt tree.

Emma hangs a Christmas tree ornament

It was fun to watch each child deliberate over where to place their ornaments on the tree! The felt trees have stayed put, but Lily loves to move the paper ones around – and take them off the tree to carry around the house.

Lily hangs a Christmas tree ornament

Want to make some of your own? Download the ornaments template!

Ornaments to Color or Sew

More Activities for Merry Christmas Mouse!

Here are more fun ornaments kids can make!

We would love to see if you make some of these ornaments in your house! You can share on my Facebook page. You can always tag me on Instagram, too. 

MaryAnne at Mama Smiles
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MaryAnne lives is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.

28 thoughts on “Ornaments for Kids to Color and Sew”

  3. Elisa | blissfulE

    Emma looks so lovely and grown-up with her hair pulled back.

    I’m going to guess that Emma went around the edges, Johnny sewed a big gets-the-job-done X, and Lily enthusiastically decorated her tree in pink! :)

  5. Grumpy Grateful Mom

    Cute idea! It never occurred to me to give my kid’s a needle and thread but I think they’d have fun doing this. I love they were meticulous about where the ornaments were to go.

    My daughter needs to make an ornament for school and this would be perfect. :)

  6. jeannine: waddlee-ah-chaa

    We do so many different art mediums but we’ve never used needle and thread. I don’t know why not! We are going to do this. Thank you for the idea. I like how each one of the children took a different approach.

    1. maryanne

      I love smocking! I want to learn how to do it – and there’s a fabulous tutorial on ikatbag.com…

    1. maryanne

      I usually have her use a dull-tip embroidery needle. I let her use a normal one this time, though, and she didn’t have any trouble.

  14. Katie

    I have been feeling very behind this year and I think making things too hard on myself. I know ER would be just as happy with color and cut out ornaments. I think I’m going to do that with her tomorrow. Then I’ll feel better about doing something holidayish with her.

    1. MaryAnne

      I use a regular needle, and have never had a problem – zero pricked fingers. We do have a couple rules: you have to sit right next to mom, and you have to SIT the entire time you use it. If you get up or want to move around, you have to put your needle in your fabric and stick everything in a safe place FIRST. I feel like it’s actually safer than a blunt needle if you are using proper fabric – a blunt needle would require more pressure to push through fabric, and therefore there would be more pressure if it went into, say, an eye. Blunt needles are best for plastic canvas or the very loose weave that is used for cross stitch.

  20. Nina

    How cute! Admittedly we don’t have anything kid-made on our tree :( But our son did enjoy putting the ornaments up and adding his little knick knack toys on the tree afterwards haha.

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