If there’s one scent that evokes Christmas in our home, than cinnamon is it. Here’s a fantastic sensory project that allows toddlers to take in one of the best smells of the season while making art!

To start, I cut out two simple Christmas-themed shapes from sandpaper. I had a coarse grade in green and a medium grade in brown, so it worked out nicely to draw a Christmas tree on the green and a simple gingerbread man on the brown.

Cut out your shapes and give to your toddler along with a few whole cinnamon sticks. Of course the first thing to do is take a nice big smell. “I smell with my nose!” Veronika is learning to say of her sense of smell.

Then I showed her that if she rubbed the cinnamon against the rough sandpaper, it left behind a trail of scented brown cinnamon.

Of course we had to smell the artwork again once it was covered!

Veronika loved both the shapes and the smell, but she was also very interested in transferring the cinnamon sticks in and out of their jar for a while. That meant this turned into a fine motor skills activity, too!

When the sandpaper was covered, I drew on a few final features with marker, then punched a hole and threaded ribbon through each so they could hang on our tree.