Little Tree

This week, we read Little Tree, poem by e.e. cummings, story and paintings by chris raschka.  The poem is a tribute to a tiny Christmas tree, and it inspired this lovely story about a little tree that dreams of holiday stardom.  We own this book because I fell in love with it a few years ago and knew it was a book we had to own.

When I saw the crayon melt Christmas trees on the Almost Unschoolers blog, I immediately thought of this book and knew we had to do the craft.  For a detailed explanation about how to make the craft, click on the words Almost Unschoolers in the previous sentence.  Here is my condensed explanation of the craft:

First, C and R cut triangles out of green construction paper.  They used the hole puncher to punch holes all over the triangles.

Then we placed some different colored crayon shavings in between two pieces of wax paper and put that between two towels; I used a warm iron to melt the crayons and wax paper together.

I did change one thing from the Almost Unschoolers directions.  Instead of worrying about lining up the holes, we just used green tissue paper for the side of the tree that would be taped to the window.  So, I cut the melted crayon wax paper to fit between the construction paper triangle (with holes punched in it) and the tissue paper triangle (with no holes punched because the light will shine right through the tissue paper) and glued them all together.  We cut a strip of brown paper and stuck it in as the trunk while the glue was wet.

The trees look so pretty in the window!  Thank you, once again, to Almost Unschoolers for a really cool idea.

I am linking this to stArt at A Mommy's Adventures.