Oh Christmas Tree

We went to get our Christmas tree this past weekend.

Before we went, Kai wanted to measure the distance from floor to ceiling in our family room. We had room for an 8-foot tree.

We had been buying trees from a local nursery for several years now. But this year, their selection was limited to Fraser Firs that started at $80, with most close to $100 or more. Ah, let’s go to Home Depot.

The prices there were much more reasonable. We found several Fraser Firs for under $40. Now that’s more like it.

The only problem was that most of the trees were bundled up with string so it was hard to tell what they would look like opened up. But I found one unbundled tree that looked great and suggested we take that one.

Kai asked how tall it was. I estimated that it was about 6 and a half feet tall.

He wanted a taller one.

He looked around and picked out the tallest one they had. It was nearly 8 feet I told him.

But it was bundled up so I wondered if it would look as nice as the other tree. And besides, it was coated with snow and ice.

But, Kai insisted on that one, and I wanted to make him happy, so that’s the one we bought.

When we got it home and unwrapped it, I discovered that there was a big bare spot near the top. And with so much ice on it, it would take hours before we could begin to decorate it.

Well, perfect. That meant that Kai could work on his special homework project.

The project was to create a poster that showed pictures of plants and animals found in the ocean, and to list some interesting facts about that habitat.

This probably isn’t a terribly difficult project for most fourth graders. But Kai has difficulty with multi-step processes so we gave him direction on how he could do the project.

First he did his research, mostly online, but also using a couple books.

Then he selected pictures to print out.

He wrote out his text on separate sheets of paper rather than directly on the poster in case he made mistakes.

Then Mom helped him organize everything, after which he then pasted it all on the posters.

It was the first project of that kind that he had to do. I’m sure there will be many more like this, of increasing difficulty, so it was good to get this one done. I thought he did fine for a first effort.

We went to check on our tree. There was a large pool of water on our family room floor from all the ice that melted off the tree. But the tree itself appeared dry so we decided to go ahead and decorate it.

Kai’s enthusiasm for decorating the tree seems to have diminished over the past couple years. This year I got frustrated when he kept playing on the iPad as I started to put the lights up.

But eventually he helped.

And once the lights and ornaments were on, you could hardly see the bare area anymore.

Hope you all are enjoying the holiday season!