Chromatography Christmas tree

This Christmas STEM activity lets students create Christmas tree decorations in a new way, using chromatography! Students will use coffee filters, washable felt tips and a few other items to learn about mixtures, pigments and more!

This chromatography Christmas tree resource has been created to support the teaching of key topics within the primary national curriculum. It’s also a fun craft activity that can be done at home, teaching children how to make colourful Christmas trees while exploring the science behind chromatography.

Activity: Make colourful paper Christmas trees

Supplies/tools needed:

• Coffee filters
• Washable felt tips
• A spray water bottle
• Lolly sticks or wooden pegs
• Yellow or metallic card
• Scissors
• Sticky tape or a glue stick

Follow our step-by-step guide for how to make colourful paper Christmas trees

Adults can help children with making their colourful paper Christmas trees:

• Take a coffee filter – fold it flat so it makes a triangle shape and colour it with the felt tips in any way you like – you might like to colour it in totally or leave spaces. You can also experiment with different patterns.
• Use the spray bottle of water to spray your coffee filter until it is wet – it doesn’t need to be dripping wet – damp is fine!
• Leave your coffee filter to dry. You should see the felt tip markings combine into a colourful pattern.
• You can peg your wooden clothes peg at the bottom to make your Christmas tree trunk or use sticky tape to attach a lolly stick trunk instead.
• The finishing touch is to add a star made of your yellow or magnetic card.

Download our Chromatography Christmas trees worksheet for a printable set of instructions. This worksheet also explores the science behind chromatography.

The resource is also available as a family activity.

The engineering context

Chromatography can be used in all sorts of helpful ways such as analysing blood samples, helping solve crimes, checking the quality of the food we eat and creating and testing new drugs and vaccines.

Suggested learning outcomes

In this lesson children will discover how to make colourful paper Christmas trees. They will also learn about chromatography and how colours are composed of various pigments.

Download our activity sheet and other teaching resources

You can download our step-by-step instructions below as a classroom lesson plan or a family activity.  

All activity sheets and supporting resources are free to download, and all the documents are fully editable, so you can tailor them to your students’ and your schools’ needs.

And please do share your learning highlights and final creations with us on social media @IETeducation #SantaLovesSTEM or send them via email to IETEducation@theiet.org to be featured in our online gallery.