For Asa’s part of homeschooling, I’m taking a page from Five in a Row and reading the same book to him every single day for a week. Then we do activities based on that book.
This week we’re doing one of my very favorite Christmas books, The Pine Tree Parable
The ending says, “Yes, it was a sacrifice, but isn’t that what Christmas is all about?” Yes. Christmas is not really about a birthday party. It’s about a sacrifice–Jesus “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8)
Who knew all that could be in one little picture book, huh? I told you it was good!
Now, for a little glimpse into how we use a book like this in our homeschool, here are some of our “Christmas Tree School” activities from this week…
Asa loves puffballs. So, we have about 4billion of them. I filled up a tub with red, white and green puffballs. Then added a few plastic ornaments from Ikea.
The kids mainly like to pick them up with tongs or chopsticks. I think Asa must be trying to eat this one. Or maybe he’s being Rudolph?
Then I got out these cute Christmas tree muffins tins. So, I asked Asa to “decorate” the trees by putting puffballs in–either all one color, or different colors. I’ll admit, I added the yellow one on top.
I saw this cute Christmas tree ornament on Pinterest (of course) and wanted to do it but thought, “Ugh, I don’t want to get green paints out!” But lo and behold, when I went into my craft closet, I had green craft sticks! So, I quickly glued the sticks together and let Asa glue the buttons on. I usually squeeze white glue into a muffin cup and let him use a q-tip to apply it. He was really into this and did every bit of it by himself.
The last thing was this fun magnet game. He just puts the magnets on the circles. I thought it would be like he was decorating the tree. He didn’t get into it. But I still think it’s fun! (FYI: I made those puffball magnets with hot glue, the metal surface is a cookie sheet and I got the printable from 2 Teaching Mommies!)
Grab your kids their own copy of The Pine Tree Parable this Christmas!
Tommy Nelson provided the book for giveaway. photo source: ian sane
I would love to have a copy of this book! Thanks for the chance to win!
We put our fake Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving. It’s all decorated and even has a couple of wrapped gifts underneath it.
We always have a real tree….nothing too huge (it wouldn’t fit in our house then!). But we love decorating it with our favorite ornaments. Our girls have ornaments from every year of their lives and love to find the ones that are theirs. I haven’t seen this book before-looks very cool.
And we are living Truth in the Tinsel….it’s so great and my kids love, love, love it!
We have a real one again this year. Love the smell when I walk in the door and it reminds me of when I was little because my parents always got a real one (usually cutting it down at the tree farm or our own property.) 🙂
Sadly, my tree is fake, but it is up and looks lovely.
Thanks for the chance to win!
We put our fake Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving. It’s all decorated and even has a couple of wrapped gifts underneath it.
We have a real tree and it is all decorated! soooo much fun doing it with my husband and our three sweet boys- 5, 3, and almost 2! Love them!!
We have a fake one…. we’ve had both through the years, but with Elias’s allergies and the fact we were handed down a really nice one, we’re sticking with this for a while. I’d love to win the book, and I HAVE to do the popsicle stick tree with Donovan!
We have two trees up and decorated. This is our first Christmas in this house, and it is big enough to have two trees up and the kids love it! We have not read the parable of the pine tree, but my 4 kiddos would love it.
We are also enjoying Truth in the Tinsel too.
We have a fake tree that’s used year after year (i just can’t handle the idea of cutting down a tree just for the sake of 1 month!) 75% of the ornaments are on the bottom 25% of the tree — carefully and lovingly hung by our 5 and 2 year old!
Our tree is up and it’s fake. I love it, we try to get it up as soon as possible each year.
We have a real Christmas tree–its been up for nearly a week but only has Truth in the Tinsel ornaments on it so far. Hopefully the rest of our ornaments will be added soon!
We have a fake Christmas tree up with ornaments that my husband and I made when we were little. I just started Truth in the Tinsel (a little late). I am a preschool teacher and one of my parents suggested it. I have two children of my own ages 2 and 4 and they loved day 1, so I and looking forward to getting through the rest of the book with them! Thank you for all the information! IT really helps me since I am not very creative!
We have a hand-me-down fake tree that’s up and decorated. Love the convenience of a fake tree, miss the wonderful pine smell. Totally loving the Truth in the Tinsel. My 3yr old has been carrying around Gabriel from Day 4, super cute!
I am one of those bad people who puts my tree up mid-November :):) I love the glow of the twinkly lights in our house too much…so I just always respond that I am Thankful for Christmas!!
And we are love love LOVING Truth in the Tinsel. It is keeping us focused and flavoring our whole Christmas season. I can’t say enough – thank you, oh Amanda!!
Hi Amanda,
We bought a new taller fake tree this year and it’s decorated from top to toe in red and silver! I love having it up – it’s so pretty 🙂
Truth in the Tinsel is going well!
Georgia 🙂
Hi Amanda. We will be purchasing our tree (real) this weekend. Our decorations are primarily red and silver with white lights. Can’t wait to decorate it!
It always goes up the weekend of Thanksgiving!
Ours is fake and up – I love that it’s fake because we can leave it up from Thanksgiving till Epiphany without worries that it’s dying!
I would love a copy of this book. We have three trees this year 🙂 one is just an oversized stick we spray painted gold and we use it as our advent tree to hang our daily Tinsel decorations on 🙂 the other is a fake one in the playroom that is just small and fun and then we have real tree in the living room, this one is currently up but still undecorated. I am loving Tinsel btw 🙂
Thanks for the giveaway! We have a real tree this year (after 2 years of no tree). We lucked out and got a beautiful tree from our local grocery store (no time to go out and cut one ourselves).
We put up a real Christmas tree. Smells so good. It will be done by this weekend.
Thanks so much,
Caterina
We not only have a real “big” tree but we have our small Jesse Tree! Having so much fun going through our advent devotional and adding ornaments everyday. By the way, bought a copy of your Truth in the Tinsel. So great! When kids are out of school we will do a week of ornament crafts from it!!
Our family tree is up, it’s real and it has a few decorations on it. Our kids (3months, 2 and 4) are really interested in touching it this year, at least the older two. We also have a small fake tree that you see right as you come into the house with out Truth in the Tinsel ornaments on it. I had to get them a tree for their special ornaments 🙂 Thanks!
Real tree and we love it!
Thank you for a chance to win! This sounds like an incredible book! We have a fake tree but our 3 year old loved to decorate it this year. He rearranges the presents under the tree daily!
This year we bought an artificial. We have a great Christmas tree farm here but with a 2yo we thought it would be difficult trying to pick one out and cut it down while trying to keep him in one spot 😉 I thought having an artificial would take away from our Christmas but honestly, it doesnt bother me at all! It’s nice not having to water it and worry about the needles falling off 😉 Thanks for the giveaway and Merry Christmas!
I’d love to win this book! We have a fake tree (I think the real thing is too high-maintenance) and we got it up and decorated last weekend. Yea!
I would love to win! I just had our 2nd daughter so we didn’t decorate this year. I’m a little sad we didn’t put up a tree. 🙁
We do a fake tree complete with lights already on – makes life easier. Thanks for the opportunity to win the book!