Once a month we are part of a Montessori Educational co-op – This month my friend used a wooden tree from Hobby Lobby and had the children do leaf pinning work with leaves glued to clothespins. I couldn’t find one at my local Hobby Lobby, so decided to make my own.
It turned out more work than I had anticipated, lol.
I started with a pile of metal hangers that I had laying in my guest closet.
I started by bending them straight
I cut off the hanger part with wire snips.
Yes, they made a mess, lol.
I then started to twist them together to form branches.
I kept working at it until I thought my tree was full enough. Ok, I stopped because I had two significant blisters on my hands from the pliers, lol
I also managed to scratch myself many times with the metal ends. So I used a hot glue gun and put a dab of glue over each end to make them not so sharp.
After several days of considering how to make my multi-colored tree one color, I settled on using floral tape. This actually worked really well and the floral tape held together pretty good.
I kept wrapping each branch, sometimes several layers to even out the “wire” look.
Tada! I had initially thought to use burlap for the base weighted with small stones, but then I had some pieces of wood from an old pallet in my garage so I cut off a couple squares and glued them together. I drilled a 1.25″ hole in the middle and stained the base. I then snipped off the extra wires at the bottom of my tree and glued the trunk securely inside my wooden base with gorilla glue.
Lastly, I painted the entire tree with a generous coat of Modge-Podge to seal it and make sure the tape didn’t unravel.
To complete my activity, I glued a bunch of fabric fall colored leaves I had picked up at the Dollar Tree a few weeks ago on to clothespins. I let them dry securely and then let my preschooler pin them on the tree. Great for strengthening little hands and promoting fine motor skills!
Would I recommend this project? Maybe if you have time like I did. But you can buy a leaf-less tree on Amazon for $20, so maybe it would be easier to just buy it. I do LOVE how it turned out, and so does my kiddo! 🙂
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