DIY Christmas window decorations

As well as being a fun group craft activity, homemade decorations bring a personal touch to the Christmas festivities. In our creative Christmas STEM activity, students will make their own festive window decorations, which will stick to a windowpane all by themselves!

This Christmas window decorations activity has been created to support the teaching of the primary national curriculum. This experiment will engage learners’ maths and science skills, making them think about adhesives, molecular bonds and more!

These window decorations can be used as part of a classroom display or they can be used at home, helping to create a wintery and festive feel for Christmas.

Activity: How to make Christmas window decorations

Tools/supplies needed:

• Four small bottles of white PVA glue
• Green, red, blue, and yellow food colouring (or whatever colours you like)
• Washing up liquid
• A plastic chopping board, plastic tray
• Biodegradable glitter
• Four small bowls
• A mixing spoon

Follow our step-by-step guide on how make Christmas window decorations

Adults can help children make their own Christmas window decorations by following these instructions:

• Learners should pour the whole content of each bottle of PVA glue into the four-separate bowls.
• Add some washing up liquid to each dish and stir well. Approximately one drop of washing up liquid will be needed for each tablespoon of glue. If learners want their designs to be solid use a little less – if they want their designs to be transparent use a little more.
• Add a different colour of food colouring to each bowl and stir well. If they want to have white, then leave the food colouring out altogether.
• Pour the coloured glue back into the small bottles and screw on the lids tightly.
• Learners decide what their Christmas decoration will be – for example, they could create holly leaves, snowmen, Christmas trees and snowflakes. Using the bottles of PVA like felt tip pens, they slowly squeeze out glue to draw their design onto the plastic chopping board or tray. (Alternatively, they can draw onto the plastic pockets that go in lever arch files).
• Leave the creations overnight to dry. In the morning learners can peel them off the plastic board and they will be ready to stick to the window!

Download our DIY Christmas window decorations worksheet for a printable set of instructions. This worksheet also dives into the science behind adhesives.

The activity is also available as a step-by-step guide for families to run at home.

The engineering context

The use of adhesives opens up new design possibilities, by allowing different materials to be joined together so that their unique properties can be used in a single product. They also allow different shapes to be joined together (or parts to be repaired) with minimal changes to their form (such as drilling holes, adding bolts etc.).

Suggested learning outcomes

This activity will teach children how to make their own window decorations for Christmas. Learners will be able to explain how molecular bonds cause adhesives to become sticky.

Help Santa escape the maze

If you’re up for an extra activity, children can try our maze to free Santa!

Download our activity sheet and other teaching resources

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

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.