Jesse Tree has started...

This year I purchased from Illuminated Inks, their Jesse Tree kit and their O Antiphons.

They are beautiful.

Upon opening them, I noticed that they do not have the complete sets as we would know it so I plan to improvise where I have to (and don't I love improvising - I do!) The very first symbol - Creation - had to be created by me as their kit started with the second symbol - Apple/Adam&Eve - So I though about what could we make that was three dimentional to make the rest of the kit for Creation? I thought, 'we have to have the world' but as we are reading Geraldine McCaughrean's excellent Advent reading book, I noticed the old man is carving a Star and Sun for the first image.

It dawned on me to create the space around the world complete with moon and stars and so this is how the finished Creation image looked.

Ok...we really did improvise and used a bit of 'poetic licence' in emphasising how important Australia is from our mind set, but if the truth be known, it just saved time!!!

Unfortunately I can be very impatient with arts and crafts but the children LOVE the time and detail, so cutting out minute stars was right up their alley, thank goodness - we make a great team in that sense.

The two great books I am using this year with our Jesse Tree journey are The Jesse Tree by Geraldine McCaughrean and The Advent Jesse Tree by Dean Meador Lambert. Both excellent resources that I purchased only recently at my book look.

I started by reading the story from Geraldine's book, very engaging for the children and they already are very fond of the inquisitive boy who visits the church to 'annoy' the Jesse Tree carver.

Then I move on and use the other book which has a lovely written explaination of the event as well as scripture quotes to read and look up, a prayer and most importantly (the children love this bit) questions to ask them!

I've just been so pleasantly surprised by my 5 year old's interaction with it all. The day we read about Adam and Eve's story from Geraldine's book he learnt a new word, 'Satan' (he kept coming back to me asking, "What's his name again? The snake?") he knows who the devil was but it was a new connection for him, the word satan. He was chattering all day about satan, the apple, Adam and Eve and God. He found a rubber life-sized snake in his wanderings and it was with him all day as he sat happily on the floor as I was schooling the children, re-enacting the events he had just heard about.

And really that is what it is all about - the children making a real connection with these stories as we make our way through salvation history to 'Emmanuel'.

My youngest at almost 3, is NATURALLY facinated with these creations, but he has shown great restraint so far, only removing them once from the tree or maybe that's because I am keeping a pretty eagle eye on them all!

I hope they all make it safely through to the end of December, I need to ask our guardian angels to 'stand guard' around this ancestory tree of the Lord.