Our Jesse Tree...

This year, the G-Man and I are enjoying a new activity that I hope will become a yearly tradition. After finding Ann Voskamp's blog "A Holy Experience", I decided to put together a Jesse Tree. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Jesse Tree, it is an Advent-long family activity that counts down the days until Christmas with lessons and stories from the Old Testament, each one pointing to the coming Messiah.

From the first day, the G-Man was on board and excited! In fact, it was a struggle for him to do just one story and ornament a day.  He could have done the whole thing in one sitting!  As soon as we started, however, I noticed that the text was written a bit above his 6 year-old understanding. I didn't have to worry, though. As soon as he heard the scripture text (the Creation), he remembered reading about it in one of his Bible storybooks:

He ran to get it and wanted to read that part in his book.  We've continued this each night; I read the scripture text and he reads from his book (so far we've only found one lesson that isn't in his book). He gets to place the ornament on the tree, and to see little by little the reason for the Messiah. 

There are many other sites with information and ornament ideas for a Jesse Tree. Here are just a few:

http://www.crivoice.org/jesse.html

http://www.eriercd.org/jessetree.htm

http://www.shalfleet.net/advent/makeajessetree.htm

Here is a blog post about a Jesse Tree Ornament party that the author attended. There are some great pictures of the ornaments that the ladies made: http://beentherelearnedthat.blogspot.com/2009/12/jesse-tree-ornament-exchange-part-2.html

For a copy of Ann's free book with daily lessons and ornaments to copy and cut out, click here.