This craft gives toddlers a helpful visual image of the countdown to Christmas, and it is completely compostable once the festive season is over! ***This craft was a real highlight of the season - everyday at breakfast the toddler was excited for 'Santa's beard time'!***
The gorgeous printable Santa image can be found on the website of cinta + co - thank you kindly Jacinta for the permission to use it in my blog photos.
Print the cinta + co image onto white card (NOT paper, as paper wrinkles when it gets wet).
Outline the picture and the numbers with black sharpie-type marker pen (to stop the colours merging together) - see the difference between not outlined and outlined in the picture...
Put your Santa into a front-less frame, such as an Ikea Fiskbo one (I've not tried this - I just assume the Ikea frame overlaps the picture enough to hold it in) or this clever slide-in frame (which we have) from Amazon - we put a ream of spare paper/ card behind the front picture to push it forward in this frame. If you don't put Santa into a frame he will scrunch up and refuse to be propped up as he gets wetter!
Cut 12 potato-starch packing 'peanuts' in half (so there are 24 shorter versions) to use as Santa's beard curls. Store them to-hand as you'll need them every day of Advent. (Those with eagle-eyes will notice we folded the 'beard curl' in the photo above - this was quite tricky for little fingers so pre-cutting them in half is worth it).
Each morning in December, help your toddler to VERY SLIGHTLY dip the end of a "magic wet and stick noodle" (as they are called on the Baker Ross website) into a cup of water and then magically stick it to the paper over the correct Advent day number.
I REALLY don't suggest you buy these specially as a new product - many eco websites use them as packaging so if you patiently wait until next year, you will probably have accumulated some for free (and without the annoying plastic packing which accompanies most craft purchases).
If you use cotton wool then you probably won't be able to compost the craft - as PVA glue includes plastic. However Coccoina glue is fully biodegradable and compostable and comes in a metal tin - so consider using that if you do end up using cotton wool. Unless you already own some, I would avoid cotton wool as it is a single use product and so has a high carbon footprint and water-use footprint sadly.
The potato-starch Santa countdown can be ripped up / chopped up into small bits and added to your compost heap after Christmas - as you know, I do love a fully home-compostable craft!