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Schools & Libraries

Schools & Libraries

The Christmas Tree Wish is enjoyed the world over by children and adults of all ages and, just in recent publication, it has won the hearts of many as a most beloved and useful book in homes, classrooms, hospitals, and libraries across the country.

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To help you share the magic of The Christmas Tree Wish with your students, we have created a helpful list of suggestions to use within the curriculum of your classroom or project. See below the ideas we have put together for extended activities, writing exercises, and ideas for group discussion.

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Additional Curriculum Connections with The Christmas Tree Wish

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Creative Writing/Art/Music/Language Arts

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  • Brainstorm Holiday Christmas words with the class.

  • Ask children to imagine their own Christmas Tree Wish experience and write about what it is that they would hope for if they were in Liam’s position.

  • As a class, go through the book and pick out all the adjectives and list them on a large sheet of paper. Do the same for the verbs and nouns.

  • Write a “Dear Abner” letter (click here for an example).

  • Music (click here for sheet music to ‘O Tannenbaum O Christmas Tree’ for Piano).

  • Give each child a bell. Play holiday songs to which they can ring the bells.

  • Break the kids into groups of three or four. Give each group a song and have them come up with a way to accompany it with their bells.

More Games & Fun

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  • Discover activity sheets and more to be used in the classroom and beyond.

Read-Aloud

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  • As a way to begin using the book as the basis for a unit or simply as a treat for the children, host a Christmas Tree Wish party.

Additional Curriculum Connections with The Christmas Tree Wish​

 

​Science/Geography​

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There are close to 15,000 farms growing Christmas Trees in the U.S., and over 100,000 people are employed full or part-time in the industry. It can take as many as 15 years to grow a tree of typical height (6 – 7 feet) or as little as 4 years, but the average growing time is 7 years.

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Have students locate a Christmas Tree Farm anywhere in the U.S. They can research the local climate, types of trees the farmer grows and the tree’s characteristics. What are the top producing states?

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Interesting FACTS:

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  • Americans cut down 15,094,678 Christmas trees in 2017, according to the most recent year of data from the U.S. Agriculture Department.

  • Growing all those trees requires about 19.7 square miles of land. That much ground would cover about 50% of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., or 86% of Manhattan.

  • On average, trees are grown on about 6 feet by 6 feet of space, or about 1,200 trees per acre, according to a report by Michigan State University.

  • Christmas tree farms take up 461 square miles in total in the U.S., according to the USDA. That far exceeds the annual cut-tree acreage because it takes multiple years to grow a Christmas tree.

  • How high would all those trees reach? The average height of a cut Christmas tree is 7 feet, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. If stacked on one another, 15.1 million trees would nearly reach Geosynchronous Orbit, where satellites can match the Earth’s rotation.

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Topics for Further Research

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  • How Christmas is celebrated around the world

  • The North Star Polaris

  • Renaissance & Christmas Art

  • How is the Christmas Holiday Season celebrated in the child’s home? Have children select a writing, speaking or art project to allow them to best demonstrate what Christmastime is like for them. Food, celebration, family, travel, gifts, traditions, likes, dislikes, etc.

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