Advent Activity - Christmas Trees

We started our Advent celebration today (I know it officially started on Sunday but I'm still getting used to this whole Advent thing!) using The ADVENTure of Christmas. We usually skip around in the book and do whatever is convenient for the day. Today we talked about the Christmas tree. We focused on how the tree represents Christmas ... how it points to the cross which is the entire reason behind Christ coming to this earth in the first place.

I Peter 2:24

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye are healed.

We talked about how the triangle shape of the tree represents the trinity - The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. We talked about how we should be like a tree that points toward heaven and should, by example, be pointing others to heaven (insert massive dose of conviction here).

The we listened to O Christmas Tree and read The Legend of the Three Trees.

I bought cranberries with the intention of making cranberry play-doh, cranberry jelly & cranberry bread. But, let's face it, no one in my house is going to eat cranberry jelly or bread. We still could have made the play-doh but I found a better use for our cranberries.

To incorporate a bit of science into this activity we made ornaments and garland from our cranberries to hang on the evergreen trees out front for the birds. The ornaments are made from floral wire. I shaped a star, heart, wreaths and candy canes and the girls threaded the berries onto the wire. While they did that I strung the cranberry garland. Some of the berries were squishy which led to juicy being squished out onto their hands. They tasted it but neither girl cared for it. We also got some good counting in as we made sure the garlands had an evenish number of berries.



Don't let that pretty sunshine fool you. It is FREEZING out there!



(Yes, I am aware that I need to remove the fall pumpkin decor from the banister!)

Happy Advent!