After seeing how much fun my own kids and many of you had making shape monsters, we decided to continue the creative fun with a Christmas twist. We used our shape reindeer set and some collage materials we had in our craft stash to make some adorably unique reindeer collage art. Along the way we learned about shapes, and we’ll be continuing on with some literacy and math extension activities using our reindeer.

$Shape Reindeer Collage Art and Math Christmas Activity for Kids with printable ideas and resources$

Materials for Shape Reindeer

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Take a peek through your craft materials, and you’ll probably find a lot of things you can use to make your own reindeer. We also include a full list of ideas in the reindeer pack. Here are the items we used the first time we made our shape reindeer:

Shape Reindeer Printables
Oil Pastels
Glue
Tape
Scissors
Collage Materials (We used brown chenille stems, craft sticks, googly eyes from CraftProjectIdeas.com, red and brown pom poms, red and brown buttons, beaded necklace bits, gold paillettes, decorative ribbon, crepe paper streamers, and foam sheets.

Time to Create

As with the shape monster set there are two versions of the shape reindeer printables to choose from. One set has a space for kids to write their names. These work great for bulletin board displays or class books. There is also a set that only has shapes for kids to cut out. I left both options out for my kids and the neighbors to choose from.

One of my favorite aspects of collage art invitations is that they are great for kids of all ages. Each child brings his or her own background knowledge and ideas to the project, and they end result is unique to each child. Preschoolers might add a couple of basic facial features while older children and those with a lot of experience with collage art will add more elaborate details. You can see how some of these differences are evident in the reindeer shown in this post. However, just as before I suggest giving kids multiple opportunities to make these reindeer by leaving out the invitation for a week or so. As kids interact with the materials again and again, they try new things with them and their creations become more elaborate.

Continue the Learning

As adorable as these shape reindeer turn out on the day we make them, that’s only the beginning. Once they are made they can be used as a tool for many math and literacy learning activities. You can learn more about these ideas in our Shape Reindeer Printable Set.

Then when you’re finally done, hang those creative reindeer up as Christmas ornaments on the tree or holiday decorations.

Extend the Learning & Play

with the Shape Reindeer Printable Set

Inside the 30-page Shape Reindeer Process Art and Math set you’ll get:

Complete list of material suggestions
Full directions for using both sets of shape art templates
9 extension activities, including math and literacy, to help you teach additional skills and concepts using your kids’ creations
Shape Set with Title and Borders
Plain Shape Set for Cutting Out Reindeer Shapes
Sorting Cards for Math Whole Group and Small Group Activities
Class Book Cover Template