Delightful Decorations

Enter into the Christmas spirit with this festive scheme of work for Year 1/2! Your class will develop their cutting and sewing skills whilst making a delightful decoration for the Christmas tree! They will explore, cut, sew, design, make and evaluate their Christmas tree decorations in this practical Christmas themed DT series of lessons.

This downloadable series of lessons comes with detailed lesson plans, engaging slideshow presentations and easy-to-use printable teaching resources.

Feeling festive? You may also like our 'Twas the Night Before Christmas English scheme of work!

Exploring Different Decorations

In this first lesson, children discuss what a decoration is, as well as where, when and why we might use them. Together, they look at different sets of decorations and identify which special occasions they are linked with. Children then move on to explore a range of different Christmas tree decorations, discussing them in terms of colour, shape and the materials they are made from. They record some of these ideas in their independent activities. In the alternative activity, children work in groups to sort decorations according to different criteria.

This downloadable lesson comes with a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

View Lesson 1

Cutting Skills

What skills will we need to make a Christmas tree decoration? In this lesson, children focus on improving their cutting skills. They first discuss the safety aspects of using scissors, before putting their skills to the test by cutting straight, zigzag and wavy lines as accurately as they can. They then apply this skill in their independent activities, where they cut out and assemble parts of a Christmas-themed picture. Alternatively, children practise drawing round templates and cutting out a variety of shapes from fabric.

This downloadable lesson comes with a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

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Sewing Skills

In this lesson, children focus on improving their sewing skills. They are shown how to thread a needle and sew both the running stitch and the overstitch. As a class, they discuss how to attach buttons and how to sew a smaller piece of fabric to a larger piece. They will be encouraged to use the vocabulary: push, pull, needle, thread, fabric. Children practise these sewing skills in a carousel of activities. Alternatively, they sew stitches on paper using colour-coded dots to practise uniform stitch size.

This downloadable lesson comes with a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

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Time to Design

In order to help them with their designs, children first explore and discuss the steps needed in order to make a Christmas tree decoration. They find out what design criteria are, look at some examples and think of their own suggestions. Children then design their own Christmas tree decoration. They are encouraged to think about the materials they will need and the joining stitch they will use.

This downloadable lesson comes with a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

View Lesson 4

Making a decoration

Children first revisit the steps needed to make a Christmas tree bauble by putting pictures in the correct order of work. They are then encouraged to think about what they think will be the easiest and hardest part of the making process for them, and what they can do if they encounter a problem. Before beginning to make their decorations, children are reminded to use the safety rules for the tools they will be using.

This downloadable lesson comes with a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

View Lesson 5

Let's evaluate!

In this final lesson, children evaluate their completed Christmas decoration. First, they revisit the design criteria discussed in Lesson 4, and in pairs, talk about their work in relation to these goals. In their independent activities, children evaluate their decorations in relation to specific statements or questions given.

This downloadable lesson comes with a lesson plan, slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources.

View Lesson 6