Shining tree

At the beginning of December 2 class the history of Christmas tree were unfolded from the very beginning when people believed that spirits lived in the trees, and trees, especially evergreens were sacred. Then we followed the 7th century Devonshire monk, teaching in Thuringia, Germany and bringing the tradition to revere the Fir tree. We stopped in in 1510 Riga, Latvia, where Christmas tree was first decorated.
From Germany to England, to Lithuania, to America following the tree and the change of decorations from apples, flowers, barley sugar,paper and straw to silver tinsel, glass beads, balls and toys; from simple forest branch to overdecorated Victorian tree, to artificial goose feathers, brush and plastic trees.

Our hands on part we started from admiring shining golden straw and colorful seeds on dark green fir in our nature corner.

So we had two groups working either on seed or straw decorations.
Seed group was busy making lovely patterns form dozen kinds of seeds - lentils, beans, peas,
corn, sunflower, pumpkin seeds, rose hips.



Straw group was creating from the whole and split, ironed straw.