How to Make a Jesse Tree (for the craft and planning impaired)

Here is how I made this felt Jesse Tree for Advent.  It was a little time consuming, but well worth the effort!  (Thanks to my daughter for the photo and explaining the internet to me).

Step 1.   Look through Mom blogs, even if doing so fills you with feelings of sadness and inadequacy, until you find a Jesse Tree project that seems to be at your skill level and does not require any really expensive materials.  I suggest this one.

Step 2.  Forget to buy the felt, and make the project with construction paper instead, because you've got a huge stack of it anyway.  Promise yourself you'll do it the right way next year.

Step 3.  Next year buy the felt and work frantically to get the last ornament done before bedtime on Christmas Eve.  Since you can't find your glue gun, use craft glue which doesn't actually work on felt so that bits keep falling off the ornaments.  Try not to lose the bits.  Promise yourself that next year you'll get a glue gun and fix the ornaments, cause you're sure as heck not cutting out all that felt again.

Step 4.  Next year, discover that you have somehow lost the ornaments.  Throw up your hands in disgust and go eat some of the chocolate you got for your kids' stockings.  Don't worry.  You can buy more later.

Step 5.  Next year buy some more felt and and a brand new glue gun. Start the ornaments over again.  But only make five before you and your whole family catch colds.  Promise yourself you'll do the rest next year.

Step 6.  Get our your felt and your glue gun and then forget to start work on the project until five days into advent.  Make a few more ornaments.  When your twelve year old daughter (who was six in step one) asks to help, hand the whole thing over to her.  After all, she enjoys messing around with felt and glue guns way more than you.  She'll have it done in a few hours.

Step 7.  Use duct tape to stick the felt banner which will hold the ornaments to the wall, because if you have to go out and buy a dowel to make a proper hanger, it will be another year.

Step 8.  Your Jesse Tree is done, and you still have a few years to enjoy it before your kids go to college!


Now to spend the next seven years knitting a sweater for my husband!

Note to Mom Bloggers:  I'm just kidding!  Any feelings of sadness and inadequacy I might experience are 100 percent my own issues, and not a result of your blogging.

What We're Reading

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I decided to start reading out loud to the kids again this year.  We got out of the habit of reading out loud as our two youngest children grew older and more proficient at reading on their own.  However, I decided to make reading out loud part of our school day.  Partly because my son is not a particularly enthusiastic reader so I want to expose him to literature and language he might not get to on his own, and partly because I hope to brighten up our school day a little.


And so we began our school year with "Farmer Boy" by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I chose this book for several reasons.  First, as the title suggests, it's about a boy, which I thought might make it more appealing to my son.  Second, we are studying U.S. history this year (although we don't restrict ourselves to literature about the time period we're studying).  And third, Laura uses fairly clear, straightforward language which I hope will make listening easier for my son.


"Farmer Boy" is the only one of the Little House books that is not about the Ingalls family.  Rather it tells the story of her husband Almanzo's boyhood.  Unlike Laura, Almanzo spent most of his childhood living on his family's farm.  And although the time period of the book is a little later, it still gives us a good idea of what early American life was like.  Later this year, it will contrast nicely with "Little House on the Prairie," when we study the westward expansion.
As with the other books in the series, "Farmer Boy" is not one long story, but a series of stories set into the framework of one year in Almanzo's life.  Some are funny, some suspenseful, many just sketches of what ordinary life was like.  My kids particularly enjoyed the bits about how the schoolteacher dealt with the class bully,  and what happened when Almanzo gave his pig candy (it seemed like a good idea at the time!)
Overall, I found the book fairly easy to read out loud.  As I said before, the author uses clear and simple language.  However she does sometimes go into some highly descriptive passages, such as how to build a bobsled, which can get a little tedious, and I suspect is difficult for the kids to follow.  Other than that, the kids and I have really been enjoying it, and my older teenage daughter even sits in when she has the time.