Collaborative Art with Christmas Tree Tessellations

Here’s another fun tessellation project that is perfect for the holiday season! Print the Christmas tree template in this post, and kids can create a collaborative work of art with beautifully decorated mini tessellating trees.

Math and art come together in this fun STEM project. A tessellation is a shape that can be repeated over and over in a pattern with no space in between. This tessellation is a modification of a triangle shape.

I wasn’t sure if it would look too “busy” to have decorated trees directly side-by-side, so we decided to print our upside-down trees on green paper (card stock, actually). I really love how it looks! However, there’s nothing wrong with doing all decorated trees, so go with whichever option you like better.

The template comes with 6 trees per page. There are two options – thick lines and thin lines. The thick lines are shown.

It’s easier to color the trees before you cut them out.

I glued on all our trees on poster board in the tessellating pattern. (Kids can totally do this themselves – it just may not line up quite as nicely as mine!)

When you glue them down, let the black lines overlap between trees.

If you cut the poster board down to 18 inches wide, it’s the perfect size for making rows of 9 trees across. It’s also easier to glue down your trees if you draw a straight line as a guide.

All the colors and patterns look so good together!

Our finished Christmas tessellation art is so festive! This would be such a fun project to do with an art class or STEM club.

Here’s a close up, just for fun. We colored our trees with colored pencils. It worked well to outline some of the ornaments and decorations with a black colored pencil and then color them in.

If you’re interested in more information about how to create tessellating shapes, this article is very helpful! My husband and I tried creating this tree shape ourselves, and then got frustrated and gave up. I contacted a friend who works in design, and he was able to whip up the correct shape in no time! Overall, tessellations are not difficult to create, however. It would be fun to have kids explore creating their own designs.

Ready to print your templates? Click below, and the file with open. You can print from there.

CLICK HERE: Christmas Tree Tessellations

We also have a Fall Leaf Tessellation project and another post with Geometric Tessellation Puzzles.