Easter Preschool Craft: Simple Pop-up Crosses

This simple project is an easy way for a preschooler to make a beautiful cross for Easter. We made our crosses quite large, about half a sheet of posterboard size to use for decorations. However, you could make these pretty crosses much smaller and cover them with another paper, to turn them into a lovely pop-up Easter card.

DIY Pop-up Cross

• Posterboard, cardstock, construction paper, or other sturdy solid color paper (I think that a dark brown, blue, gray, or black would all give this craft a stained glass feel to it, but other colors would be pretty as well)
• Small pieces of contrasting papers cut into small shapes and letters if you like (I used the scraps from these two cross projects, because colored paper is expensive here and I like to make use of all of it, and I think this is a fun project to make use of paper scraps. But you can just as easily use new paper and have you or your child cut all of the pieces out fresh. )
• Gluestick or glue
• Any other embellishments you like

1. Fold you larger solid color piece of paper in half.
2. Draw an outlitline of half of the cross.
3. Cut (or have your child who can safely use scissors cut) out the main portion of the cross, leaving only the ends of the cross-beam attached.
4. Cut out any pieces you want to decorate your cross with. We mostly used scraps that were already cut into pieces from these two other cross projects, so I only had to cut out the Alleluia and the flower at this time. You could also use pre-made letter stickers to spell out something instead of cutting your own letters.
5. Glue the colored shapes and/or onto the cross and frame of the picture, being careful to not glue pieces over the edges of the cross. Allow glue to dry
6. Once the glue has dried completely, fold the cross in from the center, opposite the original fold, to make the cross "pop-up."

Now your cross is ready to display or make into a card.