One of my main themes I have been using with my Kindergarten class this month has been Christmas Trees and so I am very tired of tree books but I found a different one that was perfect for December 9th, the day we were suppose to get our Christmas Tree. Grandmother’s Tree by Avril Tyrrell and illustrated by Frances Tyrrell is told through the eyes of a Christmas Elf ornament, one of the oldest ornaments on the family tree. The ornaments are very excited as it is the time of year that they get taken out and placed on the Christmas tree. Some of them are older and others are new but they all have a place on the Christmas tree.
This is the perfect story to read before decorating the Christmas tree. It provides children perspective and leads to great questions while putting up their favourite ornaments. This didn’t quite work for us as we changed when we got our tree and it was already up when I read this story. This didn’t stop Kaitlyn – she loves pointing out all the ornaments they each got on their first Christmas.
Instead I found a simple Christmas Tree craft the girls could both easily do in our Usborne Preschool Activity book Christmas Fun.
The very first craft in this book is Stencil Trees. Kaitlyn and I made these a couple of years ago so I knew Eileen would be able to do it easily. I wanted to let them make them their own way so I did not show them the pictures in the craft book.
To prepare I made the tree stencil by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting out half a tree for each of the girls. Then I taped it to a piece of cover stock and set the girls up with green paint. I showed them how to make fingerprints all over their trees.
This started off pretty well but then Kaitlyn decided she liked it better if she smeared all the prints together and pretty soon they had covered the entire tree. It wasn’t what I had planned but it was what they wanted to do so it was perfect.
We let them dry overnight and the next day it was time to decorate them. I picked up a variety of jewels and decorations up at the dollar store and they glued them on the tree. Kaitlyn did hers independently and Eileen just needed a bit of help putting the glue where she wanted it. I didn’t get any stars and they both asked for stars for the tops of their trees. This is a bit ironic as our family tree has an angel at the top. Kaitlyn put snowflakes around the top of her tree and declared it was outside. A very easy craft to make with young children, especially those who love paint!
Mommy's Lessons 
What a fun craft. Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!