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!