Get your kids involved and make these Stations of the Cross Grottos with popsicle sticks. Every Friday during Lent we are encouraged to pray the Stations of the Cross. Most parishes offer Stations sometime on Friday, but getting out of the house with little kids and praying Stations at Church can sometimes be difficult. If you have a set at home, you can easily pray and meditate on the Stations at home!
In the beginning I was planning to use the full size Stations of the Cross Coloring Pages, however after printing a couple, they seemed too big to use with popsicle sticks for grottos/frames. So I made a half sheet size Stations of the Cross which you can download and print here:
Download All 14 Stations of the Cross Half Sheet Size
(Save to your computer and open using Adobe or another pdf viewing program before printing)
To make them into some pretty grottos using popsicle sticks, the first step is to color!
Next make your grottos. Each of my grottos uses 11 popsicle sticks, which means to do all 14 grottos you need at least 154 popsicle sticks (plan for a few extra in case some are wonky, broken or get slobbered on by your baby/toddler). Get some at Hobby Lobby, Walmart, or even Amazon. Use a few less or a few more depending on how thick/sturdy you want these (you’ll see in the pictures). You will also need some wood glue. I used this kind, because it’s what my husband happened to already have in the garage. I think any wood glue should work though, maybe even some craft glue.
I placed a sheet of parchment paper over the grotto so that I could see where the picture would be, and plan my popsicle sticks around it. This worked well. The glue didn’t stick to the parchment paper plus we could see exactly what part of the coloring page would show. My first ‘layer’ of sticks looked like this: a bottom, and two glued at the top to form a point above where the Station number is.
Next put a little dab of glue at either end of two sticks and set them on top for the sides of the grotto:
Now take a popsicle stick and cut it in half. Then cut the curved part off of one of your halves. Glue these into a cross (with the strait sided pieces as the horizontal piece) and glue the bottom of the cross to the top of your grotto. I have it where the horizontal piece is in back, and just resting on another stick for support. NOTE: The full size popsicle stick is just sitting there supporting the cross so it can dry strait, it is not glued to the grotto.
Next add another layer to the top part and the bottom part:
And one more layer to the sides.
You can keep going to make it even thicker if you want, or just stop at one layer if you’re short on sticks. Next I traced around the grotto onto the coloring page.
Cut out just inside your lines and glue to the back of your grotto.
Paint with some craft glue (like your basic Elmer’s glue would work here), and add glitter! Alternatively you could glue on some little jewels, pebbles, maybe even sand would look neat. Or you could paint it with some acrylic paint. Obviously we went with the glitter option!
We still have a few more to finish up, and once we have all 14 done I’ll post a picture of them! Don’t plan to do all 14 in one day, unless your kids are really into coloring and gluing, or you just have lots of kids. From my experience, a 6 year old girl IS capable of gluing these, and a 3 year old boy should never be trusted with wood glue. Just thought I’d warn you.
Thanks for visiting! I hope you find these instructions useful, and that God Blesses any time you spend meditating on the Stations of the Cross.
Kristen
You are so creative! I love this idea. Planning on beginning these with my kids… Thanks so much.
Thanks Cheryl!
What a lovely craft! Thank you for the free resource and craft idea, I look forward to using it in my classroom this season.