Christmas Decorations 2022 Part 1

The teddy bears are already looking ahead to Christmas - one of their favourite times of the year. Since Harry has offered to be The Bear On The Stair again this year (the bears' equivalent of The Elf On The Shelf), it means that most of December will be taken up with everyone helping him to create his 'Countdown to Christmas' scenes. You can check out The Bear On The Stair antics from last year here. The bears may not have much time then for doing as many of their Christmas preparations as usual, so have decided to spend the rest of November getting ahead for Christmas.

They have decided they want to make some of their own Christmas ornaments this year, and Edward had a great idea for creating some pretty little Christmas Trees that can either be hung against the wall or from the branches of their big Christmas tree.

What's more, they are very simple to make so that all the bears, whatever their age, can join in. And, even better, they already have most of the materials they need in their craft boxes.

"So, what things will we need?" asked Lizzie, who was very keen to help.

"We're going to need all of the following items," said Edward. "Can you find me those coloured lolly sticks we've used before in some of our other craft projects, plus we'll need some pipe cleaners (the sparklier the better), some coloured beads, some pretty thread, some coloured clothes pegs, some glue, and any stars or other tiny decorations you can find."

"Phew, that's a long list to remember," thought Lizzie, and she asked Henry and Custard if they would come and help her find them all, which they scampered after her to do.

When they had eventually found all the items, they settled down with Edward to make their first little tree. All the other bears had now become intrigued and were sitting watching so that they could make their own versions later.

"First of all," announced Edward, "we need to create the outline of the tree, and for this we're going to use three of the coloured lolly sticks - it doesn't really matter which colour you choose because they will all look wonderful."

Lizzie, Henry and Custard decided that they would pick green lolly sticks for their tree. "Then you need to glue them together into the shape of a triangle," continued Edward, "and it will look like the outline of a fir tree."

They set to and created the triangle shape, but they let Edward do the gluing as they weren't too sure whether they might make a glue-y mess! Edward laughingly showed them how to do it without getting too much glue all over their paws.

Lizzie, Henry and Custard were very keen to start putting decorations on their "tree" but Edward said they had to wait a few minutes for the glue to dry. They spent that time trying out several designs of beads and stars and other bits and pieces until they found the one they liked the best. Then Lizzie threaded some beads onto some coloured cotton twine to make a tiny garland.

As soon as Edward said they could start adding to their "tree", Henry chose a star to stick at the top. Then they carefully draped Lizzie's garland onto the tree and glued it in several places so that it wouldn't fall off. Custard found a lovely pipe cleaner that looked just like tinsel, and draped that around the tree too. Because it was a pipe cleaner it didn't need gluing in position as you can bend and shape them any way you like and Custard found it stayed on the tree perfectly.

"What else shall we add?" asked Lizzie. "What about this tiny parcel?" She had found a small present-shaped decoration they would usually use on the front of their home-made Christmas cards. "Yes, that would look lovely," said Henry, and Lizzie dutifully glued it on.

Their tree now looked very festive and Edward suggested that they use a coloured clothes peg clipped to the bottom of the tree to look like the tree trunk. Now it looked gorgeous. They decided that they would hang their little tree against the wall so added a loop of twine to the top of the tree.

All the other bears thought the little Christmas tree was wonderful and got together in pairs to make even more. They had a great afternoon together, all vying with each other to make the very best tree they could, all with different designs. Their worktop ended up becoming quite messy by the time they had finished, strewn with glittering stars, bits of coloured twine, bent pipe cleaners and other debris, but they all grouped together to do the tidying up and it was soon all straight and ship-shape again.

"Our trees are going to look lovely hanging in rows on the wall," said Teddy. "It will be like a Christmas forest!"

Maybe you could try making your own forest of Christmas trees following what the bears did above, and looking at the steps they followed in the pictures. Have fun!