Kid’s Korner

December 2020

Make a Christmas Tree our of recycled baler twine!

By Allison Houchins, Director of Education

(Also, a mom, grandparent, artist, farmer, AND a teacher!)

Hi, kids (and moms, dads, grandparents, too!). Welcome to our 2^nd KIDS KORNER feature. Don’t you just love it when you find something that gives you ideas of how you might use it.  It is even better when what you find is FREE!  Last hay season at our farm I was so excited to see that our baler twine for making hay bales now came in GREEN!!! I love baler twine…it has thousands of uses, and it is super-strong.  My idea was to turn it into a Christmas Tree. My family helped me by saving the green twine we cut off the bales as we fed our cows.

I involved two of my grandchildren, Allie, and Will to help me. We hope our step-by-step photos will inspire you to try it for your house.

1. Will is showing the cone of livestock wire we carefully rolled and twisted into our form. We used a scrap piece about 2’ x 3’.  You could also use a tomato cage, but we couldn’t find anyone that would turn loose of one!

2. Here is Allie peeking through the beginnings of our baler twine Christmas Tree.  I showed her how to weave over-under-over-under.  It went faster when you wove with a bundle of twine rather than just one at a time.

3. Allie is getting covered up! We are about halfway woven up the wire form.about:blankImageUpload an image file, pick one from your media library, or add one with a URL.UploadMedia LibraryInsert from URL

4. Will gets involved again when we get to the decorating part…the weaving part is the hardest.

5. Our creation finds a good place on an upside-down metal tub, a candle in a big jar, and some greenery. Great job kids! I decided to take my extra twine and wrap a straw wreath base to complete our project.  We had fun and hope you will try this too!

Stay tuned for the next KIDS KORNER project here. Thanks for visiting my creative corner.