Paper Plate Christmas Tree Counting Decoration

The Paper Plate Christmas Tree Counting Decoration is two activities rolled up into one. It is an interactive counting activity where children ‘decorate’ the Christmas tree by counting out tokens to match the number written on the star. It is also a Christmas garland decoration or number chart.

These Paper Plate Christmas Trees are so simple to make!

What you will need?

You will need 3 large paper plates (this is for counting 1-10) cut into quarters, green paint, tokens such as buttons or pompoms, PVA craft glue and sticky tape.

You will also need the printable numbered stars to stick onto the paper plate Christmas trees. The stars are available from 1-20 for an option to create a 1-20 numbered Christmas tree garland.

Click here to download and print: Christmas Counting – Stars Printable 1 – 20

Let’s Paint

• After cutting the paper plates into quarters, paint each part with green paint. Here we have used a dark and lighter colour green.
• While you wait for the paper plates to dry, print and cut out the numbered stars.
• When the paper plate quarters are dry, sticky tape the numbered stars to the top of each tree.

Let’s Play

Some Ideas:

• Place all the numbered Christmas Trees into order from 1 to 10 (or 1-20).
• Mix up the order of the Christmas Trees and unjumble them back into order. Remove one of the numbers and guess which one is missing.
• Talk about which number which number is the biggest and smallest?
• Decorate the tree: Read the number on each tree and place that many tokens onto the tree. You could use pompoms, sequins or buttons for tokens to decorate the trees.
• Remove all the tokens and start counting again. This time on one tree only count out green buttons or create a patterns.
• Adapt the activity for different abilities and age groups. You may only start with numbers 1-3 or 1-5 and others may make numbered Christmas trees up to 20.

Let’s Learn

Learning Opportunities

• Fine Motor Development
• Hand-Eye Coordination and Control
• Concentration
• Mathematics – begin to understand that the starting point and order in which you count them does not affect how many.
• Recite number names in order, it may start with 1-3, 1-5 and upwards to 10
• Recall what number is missing in a number line 1 to 10
• Recognise numerals up to 10 and begin to order them
• Recognise small collections in a group, which one has more and which one has less, such as 1 is less than 5 because there is less tokens on the card then there is one 5.

Paper Plate Numbered Christmas Tree Decoration

In the previous activity, children were able to remove the decorative tokens for an interactive and repetitive counting activity. To create the Christmas Tree Garland, children count and glue the tokens on to decorate the tree.

Once the glue has dried, then they are able to arrange them into the shape of a Christmas tree or a number line for a homemade Christmas decoration.

Click here for more CHRISTMAS activities & play ideas

Click here for more COUNTING activities & play ideas 

Available in our online shop:

The Ultimate Christmas Printable Activity Pack– 100 pages and over 20 Numeracy and Literacy Activities