The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas (Advent Book, Activities, and Printables for the Whole Family)

Update November 2014: We have updated The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas, a family devotional for Christmas, as well as the accompanying printables and are now making our family devotionals available through our educational website Greenfield Education.

See details on the here.

Thanks for reading!

Two years ago, we were thinking about what Christmas traditions we wanted to pass down from our childhoods and what new traditions we wanted to start in our own family.

We like making and giving gifts. We love connecting with friends and family. We like making and eating special food, a lot.

But we wanted something to do something very special to keep the focus of the Reason for the Season throughout the whole Christmas season, and we wanted to be able to have everyone in the family participate.

We decided to make our own book that combined Bible reading, singing, discussion questions, and activities all together that we could use for years to come and pass down to our own kids. What we came up with was The Tree Of Life: Seeking The Son This Christmas, a Jesse Tree style study that combined everything we wanted and more.

And we thought perhaps other people could benefit from this resource as well.

Here is the introduction:

Jesus is the reason for the season.

How many times have we heard these words yet lost Jesus in the busyness of Christmastime?

Shopping, parties, preparation, and even family gatherings can begin to crowd the Son out of His own birthday celebration. The other aspects of the holiday season are not all bad. We personally love Christmastime and the joyful celebrations it brings. And the Jews of old were in fact commanded by God Himself to keep many feasts to remember God and what He had done for them. So we don’t
think God hates parties, or good food either.

So in the middle of our feasts and celebrating, let’s remember God and what He has done for us, the reason we say we are celebrating. Let’s not lose sight of the Tree of Life amidst all of the other holiday decorations. Let’s not omit the Bread of Life from our holiday dinners. Let’s not forget The Way when we are traveling to relative homes or The Door went entering friends houses. (See John 6:35; 10:9; 14:6; 15:5.)

When we intentionally seek the Son, we begin to see Him everywhere. God can see our desire to grow closer to Him and will reveal Himself to us throughout history and creation. The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son this Christmas is designed to be a tool to help us draw close to Christ this Christmas.

This Jesse Tree style book is designed to trace the roots of Christ through the history of the Bible and explains how we are each supposed to live as branches of the Vine, intimately attached to the Tree of Life, our life source. (See John 15:4-5.)

Each day this December, we will learn a little more about this great Tree of Life through a series important biblical tales about amazing things God has done and mighty men and women of God. Each tale has a symbol to go along with it to help us better remember these important history lessons.

How to use this Book 

This book is divided into thirty-one sections each with a scripture reading, thoughts on how the reading relates to Christ, discussion questions, and suggested hymns and activities. We tried to include a variety of levels for the questions and activities so that this book would be applicable for a wide range of ages. We designed each section to be for an individual day, but, of course, you can go as fast or slow as you like.

Printable Resources

Inside the book is a link to the printable resources we have  created to go along with this book. There are full color original artwork ornaments to accompany each day's reading. There are also texture rich coloring page ornaments so your child(ren) can create their own keepsake set of Jesse Tree ornaments. There are also decorative printables and printable cards included.

Update November 2014: We have updated The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas, a family devotional for Christmas, as well as the accompanying printables and are now making our family devotionals available through our educational website Greenfield Education.

See details on the here.

By the way, if you want to use Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas and truly can't afford it at this time, just email me at anna@thedoityourselfmom.com, and I'll send you the PDF.

Find out more about The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas and our other family devotionals.

The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere (Free Ebook and Thanksgiving Printables)

Update November 2014: We have updated The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere, a family devotional for Thanksgiving, as well as the accompanying printables and are now making our family devotionals available through our educational website Greenfield Education.

We are giving away The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere until the end of November 2014.

See details on the Greenfield Education blog.

Thanks for reading!

With the holidays approaching fast, we have been working on ways to teach our values to our children. We wanted to create something that could become a tradition in our family and put Bible reading, singing, discussion questions, and activities all together.

We decided to create books that would encompass all of these things and be suitable for a wide range of ages so the whole family could participate. And we thought perhaps other peope might be searching for something similar.

For our Thanksgiving study, we chose a thankful tree theme, and put together a book called The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere. We intend to use it Thanksgiving week.

Here is the Introduction:

It is easy to go through life and miss the blessings all around us. Often we are focused on the things we don’t like and wish were different in our lives, rather than thanking God for blessing us abundantly above anything we can ask or think.

If I don’t have enough chocolate, I wish for more. If I do, I wish for less (pounds on the scale, that is). If we live in a house with central heat, we don’t like the heating bill. If we don’t, we don’t like the cold. If we don’t have enough time with our family, we wish for more. If we do, sometimes we wish for alone time.

Or we can try to change our attitude and tune our hearts toward God. Then we might find things to be thankful for all around us.

In our current house, if we look out our living room windows, we can see an ugly factory. But we can also see beautiful mountains. Which will we choose to focus on, in this life the beauty or the beastly.

Even if nothing seems to be going right in this world, if we truly know Christ, we know this world is not our home. Our true treasures lie elsewhere, and we can be thankful even if all we have is unseen blessings.

What's Included:

This book is divided into seven sections each with a scripture reading, thoughts on thankfulness, discussion questions, and suggested hymns and activities.

We tried to include a variety of levels for the questions and activities so that this book would be applicable for a wide range of ages.

We have also included a variety of printable resources to go along with this short book. There are a Thanks Giving Tree, Individual Leaves, other Decorative Printables, and Thank You Cards. You can use these to complete some of the activities if you like.

This PDF ebook is completely free for you to download. Our thanks to you for reading here at The Do-It-Yourself Mom.

If you like this short one week long study, we hope you'll consider using our similarly patterned Christmas book as well. A Jesse Tree style study The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas is a book and accompanying printables designed to be used for the whole month of December. Learn more about The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas here.

Find out more about The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere.
Find out more about The Tree Of Life: Seeking The Son This Christmas.

Thanks for reading. I'll be sharing more things I'm thankful for all Thanksgiving week.

DIY Pumpkin Veggie Platter

Here is s super simple and fun way to display your veggies for fall. Just wash, peel, and chop your orange and green veggies and arrange them into the shape of a pumpkin!

My kids thought this was a fun way to eat veggies and it would be great for a holiday gathering as well.

Preschool Fall Craft: Handprint Turkey

Here is another super simple painting project to celebrate fall with small children. Like the fingerprint pumpkin and tree, this turkey handprint picture is a great way to gear up for the holidays and remember how small the kids really are for years to come.

Preschool Fall Craft: Handprint Turkey

• Paint in fall colors
• Brushes
• Paint smocks if desired
• Paper

1. Help the child to cover their hand in brown paint and spread out their fingers to paint the base of the turkey.
2.  The child can then make different colored fingerprints on top for feathers and one red fingerprint on the turkey's neck for it's waddle.

Mandarin Monday: Intrinsic Impli ation Character of Briefness Can Give Birtm to Wigdom (The Chinglish Files)

DIY Caramel Candy Corn and Pumpkins

I don't really like store bought candy corn. Or at least I didn't when we were in America, American candy corn might seem better here. Here is China they have candy that looks like a corn cob and it actually tastes like corn. They have popsicles like that too. But I don't like either of those at all.

What I do like, a lot, is homemade caramel. So I made some caramel candy corn, pumpkins, and these cute turkeys I showed you before.

I used homemade caramel to make these, but I imagine a number of other options would work well also. Homemade chocolate ganache could work, as well as homemade edible play dough. I imagine store bought caramel, frosting and extra powdered sugar, or fondant would all work well too.

Homemade Caramel Candy Corn and Pumpkins Recipe

• Caramels (homemade, store bought, or see other options above)
• Sprinkles
• Chocolate chips

1.  For the candy corn, knead caramel and form into an elongated oval. Press yellow and green sprinkles on.
2. For the candy pumpkin, knead caramel and roll into a small ball. Mark lines with a toothpick and top with a chocolate chip or green sprinkles.
3. Allow to harden in the refrigerator before serving or storing in an airtight container.