A Wish to be a Christmas Tree Story Hour

A Wish to be a Christmas Tree Story Hour

Monroe, Colleen, and Michael Glenn Monroe. A wish to be a Christmas tree. Scholastic, 2009

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1. Setting the scene:

For this book, storytellers should have the classroom or reading space decorated with festive trees, ornaments, and wreaths. Students can make their own paper holiday trees or snowflakes beforehand to help hang on the walls, and a discussion of what children enjoy the most about snow and winter can help get them into the world of the story.

2.              Get into character:

Since this tale is told from the point of a view of a Christmas tree that is always looked over for being too overgrown, storytellers should dress up wearing all-green and deepen their voice to match that of a majestic pine. If storytellers really want to be creative, they can bring in outside branches or pine needles to show the students as they read the book.

3.              Props:

As noted for getting into character, the reader can bring outside greenery or bring in pine needles as a way to engage their readers. Students can also hold up their own created paper trees during the story reading to keep them active and involved.

4.              Telling the Story:

The storyteller should shift his voice around during the telling of the story, with a higher voice to mimic the animals that talk to the tree and a lower one to imitate the tree himself. The book should be splayed out and shown to the students during the reading, and the story teller should match their tone to the tree’s attitude before and after he is decorated by his friends.

5.              Connected Books for Display in MLA Format:

This book could be an introduction to a unit on more well-known winter-themed books, including:

Van, Allsburg C. The Polar Express. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1985. Print.

Seuss, Dr. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. New York: Random House, 1957.

6.         Snack ideas:

Tree-shaped cookies or snacks would be a good supplement to this story, especially if this was read leading up to winter recess for students.

*While I recognize that diverse groups of learners have students that celebrate a variety of holidays during these winter months, I think that the easy-reading nature of these stories would be appropriate for younger, pre-school aged children who could benefit from the storytelling aspects of these texts.

Tags: Holiday, pre-school, directed-reading, story hour