Second Week of Advent- Jesse Tree

This was a crazy weekend, as this was our annual "Craft Fair" weekend with my sister and mom, so I was busy all morning Saturday selling our wares our local craft fair for kids to shop at for their parents and family. I also was signed up to serve as a Lector at the 5:00 p.m. Saturday Mass, so this week it was up to my husband to come up with the Lesson plan.

He researched Advent, and decided to teach about the Jesse Tree, and to make a Jesse Tree in our class. The story behind the Jesse Tree can be found at http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=545 and http://www.cresourcei.org/jesse.html

Basically, this is a tree that traces bible stories back from Jesus back to the Old Testament. It has great references back to bible stories and bible verses, which I personally like as a Protestant convert. The trees provide great discussion points for during advent, and a great opportunity to crack open the Bible with the kids at home.

We used half sheets of white posterboard, one for each child. We printed off the symbols from the OSV website: http://www.osv.com/Portals/0/images/pdf/JesseTree.pdf. We then reduced them on the copy machine at 80%, which made them still easy enough to color, but small enough so that they could all fit on the half sheet of posterboard. On each sheet of posterboard, we drew a line down the middle (long-way) and parallel lines across the middle line in the shape of the tree.

In class, we had the kids color all of the symbols, and cut them out (words/bible references included in the cutout shapes). The kids then attached the symbols with glue sticks, starting with the Jesus symbol at the top, and the Mary and Joseph (the carpenter) symbols slightly lower and next to Jesus. The rest we let the kids put on the "trees" in any order.

These turned out pretty cute, and hopefully a valuable conversation starter at home during advent. We sent home information about the Jesse Tree for those parents who might not have seen one before (I hadn't).

This class was a success, but it took nearly our entire hour-- no time for our traditional circle time. We just did our explaining as the kids worked.