We’ve been up to our noses in delightful Christmas and Winter reading. Yesterday we read Little Tree which is a story by chris raschka based on a poem by e.e. cummings. (It’s the 58th book Jaylene’s read by herself since we started the 100 books in Grade One project.)
Then we made curly Christmas trees. We’ve made these before but went an extra step this year by adding pompom ornaments.
Materials:
Two pieces of thick-ish paper cut to triangles the same shape (we glued patterned paper together to make it stronger).
One piece of paper cut out in a spiral.
Pompoms!
Glue
I attempted to let Jayden join us for this project as he’s currently refusing to take naps and he loves glue. That’s why there are no inbetween pictures. Let’s just say that from now on his glue adventures will take place at school.
Cut down the middle of the top of one of the triangle trees, and up the middle of the bottom of the second. Adjust as needed until they fit together.
Glue pompoms on the spiral, and when they’re dry attach it to the top of the tree.
After we finished our trees, we snuggled under a blanket and watched our twinkly lights on the tree and brainstormed possible poetry lines that we could use to describe our tree. Then some friends arrived and after they left we made homemade pizza so quite a bit of time passed by before Jaylene had a chance to write her poem.
She even illustrated it.
Apparently she wasn’t impressed with e.e. cummings signature style of using lowercase letters. What’s your favorite winter poem or song?
9 comments
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December 15, 2008 at 11:30 am
Helena
What a cool tree! I like the poem, too.
December 15, 2008 at 11:31 am
Heather T.
*grins* Your christmas tree *really* rocks, I love Jaylene’s poem, and I also love eecummings… don’t think I have a favorite, though.
December 15, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Megret
This is a neat idea! I love your creative endeavors — especially for Christmas.
Speaking, I nominated you for an award over at my blog….stop by to see!
December 15, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Suzerella
The tree is very cute. Jaylene’s poem is nice, too, and colorful (I like that quality in just about anything)! I like almost all of the Christmas hymns at church, but we don’t read much poetry at our house. In fact, I was grousing just yesterday that we weren’t singing as many Christmas hymns in our meetings as I would like, and The Husband suggested singing them all on Christmas Eve. Since the music (we’ll use strictly instrumental, but vocals are available) is on the church’s website, why not? And I can quit grousing, which is also a plus. I also love “The Messiah,” although it’s not strictly Christmas (nor winter). I’ve been playing it at work. I notice that my co-workers tend to turn on their music when they come back. I can’t think why…
December 16, 2008 at 1:27 am
Lisa
The curly tree is such a great idea! I had a tough time this week thinking of a “curly” craft project
December 16, 2008 at 8:19 am
Sam
I love the curly tree. Going to have to try that, with my glue addict, lol. The poem is great too. We’ve been reading lots of christmas poetry, but we haven’t tried writing any….yet
December 18, 2008 at 5:20 am
Nikki
You are so good with the kid crafts! I always thought I’d love crafting with the kids but I dread it. I tend to want to do stuff for them to much because I have to have things just so. It’s so hard to give up that control!
December 19, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Cam
Great tree idea! Love Jaylene’s poem and yay for all her reading!!
December 20, 2008 at 3:32 am
bekaboo
Jaylene’s poem matches her apron (?). She has such wonderful penmanship. You do so many fun things with your kids, Julie! I love that tree! I will look for that book. Our favorite is a silly book called The Night Before the Night Before Christmas–about everything that goes wrong before it turns out just fine.
Every Christmas Eve since she was 5, Isa reads us all The Night Before Christmas.