Make your Christmas STEM activities educational with this fun engineering activity to make your own wrapping paper.
Kids will love making their own paper designs in this hands-on engineering activity for kids.
We love bringing the holidays and the current season into our school lessons, and when we can add in a Christmas STEM activity, we do!
This week, we brought the A into STEAM with the create your own wrapping paper challenge!
The kids had a blast creating their own designs and learned quite a bit about art, design, symmetry, and how real wrapping paper is made.
Find out how to make your own wrapping paper STEM activities below!
Related: STEM Activity Ideas for Kids!
Design Your Own Wrapping Paper Christmas STEAM Challenge
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What you’ll need to make your own Christmas wrapping paper:
- Butcher paper or construction paper
- Acrylic paints (they dry fast, that’s why we love them)
- Paintbrushes
- Glitter
Before starting this activity, talk with the kids about how real designs are made.
I talked with my kids about how most designs are made by an artist creating a small version of the design that is copied and mass produced later on.
I also talked about symmetry and making sure your design would look good in a repeating pattern.
I illustrated this by folding a paper into quarters and adding a dot of paint to the lines.
Then, when the paper was folded back up, the design was the same on both sides.
After our brief instruction, the kids were free to create their own design.
Bo made one giant yellow blob in the center of her paper, then sprinkled it with glitter.
Monkey too our lesson to heart a little more and created a design of repeating reindeer.
I was happy how this activity turned out because it was simple, didn’t last long, and the kids were able to be creative within a set of guidelines, which I’m always happy about.
We aren’t going to reproduce their designs, but we will try to wrap some of our smaller gifts in their handmade paper.
Christmas STEM Activities by Grade
Christmas STEM Activities for Preschool
Christmas STEM Activities for Kindergarten
Christmas STEM Activities for 1st Grade
Christmas STEM Activities for 2nd Grade
Christmas STEM Activities for 3rd Grade
Christmas STEM Activities for 4th Grade