Exploring Advent With a Jesse Tree

I have wanted to do a Jesse Tree with the girls for a couple of years now - this year we finally got organised! Above is our simple tree made from apple twigs pruned from our lovely big apple tree. Below is Idris helping Eve to colour her symbol ready to hang on the tree. Yes, Idris is in a pink snuggle suit - I think it's wasteful to give away perfectly good snuggle suits just because they are pink!! Our house gets parky in the Winter and he is drooly so the more snugglies the better!!

 

Each night after bath time we gather around the table in dressing gowns and I read a chapter from Geraldine McCaughrean's The Jesse Tree. The plot is set with a grumpy old carpenter carving a traditional Jesse Tree in a church; an inquisitive boy on holiday visits him daily and asks insightful questions and begs for another story! Each day the carpenter grudgingly tells some more!

When the chapter is finished we talk about it and the girls colour the symbol that corresponds to the story. I printed these symbols - they don't match completely to the book (using an earth instead of the sun and moon for example) but in my recent spirit of quashing my perfectionism and getting stuck in, they do very nicely!! We stick them back to back on a red cardboard shape, thread a string then add them to the tree! The girls are really enjoying this!