Our "Green" Jesse Tree

One of the neat things about homeschooling this year is that during the days leading up to Christmas I find myself having the time to really enjoy and talk about all the traditions surrounding the season. We've had time to explore cultures and really focus on the true meaning of Christmas. This year we made a Jesse tree.

A Jesse tree is a way to count down the days of advent that lead up to Christmas by making an ornament that represents a story in scripture. Each day you read a scripture starting with creation leading up to the birth of Jesus. The name Jesse tree comes from Jesse in the bible who is considered the first person in the genealogy of Jesus.

First I went to a website by Faith magazine to download the templates for the ornaments. They also have the scripture readings for each day. The small templates were just the right size to glue on our scratched up DVD's. I've been holding on to many of these wondering what to do with them and this project took care of that nicely. I'm feeling very environmentally correct over this project and glad I could use something we had around the house to make our ornaments.

We just glued a little ribbon hanger on the back side and the girls cut out the print out and glued it to the other side of the DVD.

We had a little artificial tree that we had used several Christmas's ago when we were moving to our new house, but not out of our old house yet. We set this little tree up in our new house so we could decorate it as well. It worked perfect for our Jesse tree.

We put it up in our home school room and we've been enjoying it every day. Every day we sit down and read the scripture for that day and find the ornament that represents it. The girls and I have enjoyed reading each bible story and discussing it. It's been a wonderful way to start or even end our home school day. And it's been a great way to bring the true meaning of Christmas back into our hearts every day!

Whoops...Missing Picture

I just realized that the picture of my girls with their Super Cleaning Girl aprons did not make it to my post on Wednesday! I have to share because the aprons my mom made are too cute.

So here they are:

Super Cleaning Girls

Since we started homeschooling this year I've had to adjust many routines. One of them being my cleaning schedule. Suddenly I had extra bodies at home all day, I was cooking 3 full meals a day and needed to figure out how to clean with everything else going on. I was also tired of everytime we took a break from school and I mentioned the word "clean" or "straighten up" all I heard was moaning and complaining. So one day at break time when our school room was in desperate need of a clean up I called out, "I need my super cleaning girls! Quick grab your cleaning girl aprons." Luckily my mother had made these precious aprons for my girls this summer and they are just perfect for our cleaning girl outfits.

I had no idea how this would go over, but all three of my children (yes even the 2 year old) jumped up and grabbed their aprons. I set the timer for 15 minutes and we all scrambled to clean up the room. Every few minutes someone would call out the time left so we were sure to make it in time.

All I can say is so far this is working great. We try to do at least a room or two a day, which is helping me to not feel so overwhelmed. The girls immediatly go to grab their aprons the minute I call out for help for the "Super Cleaning Girls"

That's my WFMW tip!