Mr Gnome or Mrs Gnome – a Christmas tree decoration for Saint Nicholas’ Day and Christmas

Age: from 7 years old

Materials:

printed templates that you can download from this page for free!
fineliners
crayons
markers
scissors
thread or string
punch

December is a special time when we celebrate St. Nicholas’ Day and Christmas. Pre-Christmas preparations are an ideal opportunity for children to practice manual skills, cutting, drawing, and decorating. The characters of little Santa’s friendly helpers are a fashionable and great topic to use in art lessons, at a common room, or during developing interests at home. It is best to use fineliners and crayons to decorate them. Moreover, it is worth learning how to draw new textures, structures, repeating patterns, placing points and lines. Each work, although based on the same template, can be a new discovery of juxtaposed colours and a different styles of hatching. It does not require the use of any additional tools, apart from crayons, pens, and markers with a fine tip. Print the template, cut out all the elements, glue them together, paint, hatch. Make a hole with a punch in the gnome’s hat and use a thread, tie it up. Finally, glue the entire gnome onto a colored sheet of paper and cut along the edges, leaving a 3mm gap. So now, it’s ready to hang on the Christmas tree.

Below are examples of the effects of children’s work: