DLTK's Crafts for Kids
USA Wreath

This is a simple red, white and blue wreath that children can make with construction paper.

Materials:

• Ring of cardboard (empty cereal boxes work wonderfully)
• construction paper (red, white and blue)
• scissors
• glue,
• small piece of wool
• printer

Instructions:

• Trace a small plate and a large plate onto a piece of old cardboard.  (My 6 year old enjoys tracing by herself.  My 3 year old prefers I do this part.)
• Empty cereal boxes or frozen dinner boxes work well as a source of recycled cardboard.
• It doesn't matter if you go over the folds of the cardboard.
• Cut a small strip of cardboard and glue or tape it onto the back of the ring over any folds in the cardboard.
• This will reinforce the ring.
• Cut strips of blue construction paper (about 1 1/2 inches by 4 inches).
• Cut strips of red construction paper the same length, but a bit narrower (about 1 inch wide).
• Cut strips of white construction paper the same length, but even narrower (about 1/2 inch wide).
• Stack the three colors of strips one on top of the other.
• You can do some rolls with red, white and blue (from thickest to narrowest) and some with white, blue and red if you like.
• The rolls make really cute napkin rings too!
• Glue the strips into rolls (like making a paper chain).
• Glue the rolls of construction paper onto the wreath.  Alternate colours.  My oldest daughter is in grade 1 and they spend a lot of time on patterns.  This is great practice for that.
• Print out the stars template.
• Glue the stars together from biggest to smallest.  Try to center things (this is good practice for younger children to sort shapes from largest to smallest).
• Take a piece of string and tape it to the wreath and to the star so the star hangs in the center of the wreath.
• Hang on the wall.
• You can do the wreath with one row or two rows.

OR  make the fold and cut star to make the project more challenging for ages 6+

Templates:

• Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).

Stars Template   (color)   OR   (B&W)

Print friendly version of these instructions