Truth in the Tinsel

Last year I read the Christmas story to Aria every day leading up to Christmas.  We put the felt pieces on our Nativity calendar and Aria totally understood that Christmas was Jesus' birthday.  This year I want to go a bit deeper.  She already knows the story of Jesus' birth.  I want to start helping her learn more about why Jesus came to Earth.  I've heard of a Jesse tree and thought I wanted to do that.  But I was a little disappointed because it just seems to go through the Bible stories in chronological order.  We've done that twice now in our daily Bible reading.  My awesome and creative friend made her own version of a Jesse tree type activity last year with her kids and posted it all on her blog.  I wanted to do something like her without copying her completely.  I asked her for resources used and she pointed me to something else she'd heard of, Truth in the Tinsel.  I really liked what I saw on their website and I purchased the ebook.  I like to have a base to start from and then make it fit us. 

Each lesson has Scripture to read, a craft to make, further discussion to have, and a 'go deeper' option.  When I told Aria we were going to do a craft every day until Christmas to learn more about Jesus, she yelled out a big cheer.  I guess that means she approves!  Today we did the first lesson, which I call 'Jesus is the light of the world.'

I should have taken a close up of just the ornament, but you can pretty much see it in the tree picture.  It is a black outline of a candle.  Aria glued red, orange, and yellow tissue paper between the black outlines to give a fire color to it.  Then we punched a hole on top, made it an ornament and put it on the "baby tree."  We talked about how darkness is scary sometimes, but if you have Jesus in your heart, you will always be in the light.  We did the craft right after breakfast this morning and the main idea stuck with Aria.  Right before bedtime tonight she randomly exclaimed, Jesus is the light of the world!  I'm looking forward to all 24 little lessons we will learn about Jesus this year!