Holidays Around the World: Germany

As a part of our unit on holidays around the world, we read and then sang "O Christmas Tree" with the book version by Debbie Trafton O'Neal and read The Legend of the Christmas Tree by Pat Matuszak. We discussed the how the tradition of the Christmas tree began and how the tradition of using candles at Christmas time began. The students then created their own tree out of hearts (we reviewed number patterns as we created them - the numbers decreased by one with each layer). The students then added a heart and yellow hole punches to decorate their tree. They then drew lines under the yellow hole punches to turn them into candles to symbolizes that candles were once placed on Christmas trees in Germany.