DLTK's Holiday Crafts for Kids
Autumn Wreath Craft
The diameter of the completed wreath is about 15 inches.
This craft is fun for older children (and adults!) - Age 6+. There are quite a few steps that younger kids (Age 2+) can help with, but they won't be able to do the craft independently. This is a good family project!
This fun autumn wreath is made with, you guessed it, TP ROLLS!! Everyone in my family has been collecting them for me and we ended up with a whole bunch of extra ones. I was stumped for a way to use them!
We're hosting thanksgiving at our house this year and I wanted to make a big wreath to hang up. I went to the craft store to find a wreath base and was shocked by how much they cost.
So... This is what we did.
Materials:
- Wire coat hanger
- 14 to 16 tp rolls
- Optional: Neutral color paint like brown, yellow or black
- red, orange and/or yellow construction paper (you could also use craft foam or white paper painted or colored...
- if you want this to be a real "kids project", have them do leaf rubbings and cut those out to paste on the wreath.
- To do a leaf rubbing,
- collect leaves from outside and place them bumpy side up on a table.
- Put a piece of white paper over top.
- With the side of an unwrapped crayon, rub over the leaf to make your rubbing.
- Then cut out.
- You can have a whole class/daycare make one wreath for the wall using this leaf rubbing technique.
- tape,
- glue,
- scissors
Craft Instructions:
- ADULT: Take each tp roll and cut a slit HALFWAY through.
- Optional: Paint tp rolls a neutral color. You can see from the finished craft that not much shows through, but my kids have fun painting, so we painted them all brown.
- Let dry.
ADULT: Bend the
coat hanger to form a circle.- Using the slits you cut halfway through each roll, slide the toilet paper rolls onto the hanger to form a large circle.
- Optional: Secure the rolls with a bit of masking or Scotch tape by taping the openings on the inside of the circle. This will prevent them from spinning while you work. If you skip this step, don’t worry, the paper leaves will hold everything in place once your craft is finished.
- Next, cut out lots of leaf shapes! We folded our construction paper in half, then in half again, and traced the shapes onto the top layer. Cutting through the folded paper gives you four leaves at a time.
- I’ve also included a template with several leaf shapes to choose from. We used maple and poplar leaves, but pick the ones that remind you most of home!
- One person can be doing this part while another is assembling the tp roll wreath base.
- We made sets of leaves by
putting a maple leaf on top and gluing 1 yellow + 1 orange leaf to the top at an angle and 1 yellow + 1 orange leaf to the bottom at an angle.
- We glued these onto the tp rolls.
- This made more of a pattern on our wreath.
- Younger children could just randomly glue the leaves where-ever they wanted.
- Tie a bow on the top if you want to.
If you're like me, right now you're envisioning all the different types of wreathes you could make this way... Halloween with jack'o'lanterns, ghosts and bats, Christmas with holly leaves and berries, Valentine's Day with hearts, St Patrick's Day with shamrocks, rainbows and pots of gold, etc, etc. I'm sure you'll see templates/instructions for various wreaths made along these basic lines pop up on the site over the next year or two!
Templates:
- After printing, close the template window to return to the main page.
- If the template doesn’t fit on one page, adjust your printer margins:
• In most browsers: Print → More settings → Margins → Minimum
• Or use Page Setup / Printer Setup in your printer dialog
Template (color) or (B&W)
Printable version of these instructions
Squirrel made with Autumn Leaves