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Fun Facts about Christmas Trees and Christmas Tree Crafts

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This time of year Christmas trees are starting to pop up all over (if they haven’t already been up for a month!) so it feels like a good time to share some trivia and fun facts about Christmas trees. Share these with your kids or in the classroom. 

Evergreens were used as decoration in ancient Egypt and Rome, but the tradition of using an evergreen tree in the home as a Christmas decoration (lit with candles back then) can be traced to Germany and made its way to the United States in the 1800s. According to this post all about the history of Christmas trees from History.com, Martin Luther was widely credited as being the first to put candles on trees. 

The first records of Christmas trees being used in America were in the 1820s, and they were used by Germans in Pennsylvania. The use of Christmas trees on both sides of the Atlantic began to take hold when Queen Victoria was sketched with her family around a Christmas tree. 

Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states, and the iconic Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has been lighting up New York City since 1931. The first lights were added to the tree two years later, and now the tree has more than 50,000 lights. 

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, between 25 and 30 million real Christmas trees are sold in the United States every year. About 350,000 acres are used for growing Christmas trees in the United States, and generally three seedlings are planted for every tree that is harvested. The average growing time for a tree to become big enough to be a Christmas tree is seven years. 

Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington are the top tree-growing states. When it comes to artificial trees, 80 percent of them are made in China. 

Now that you know a little bit more about Christmas trees, how about some Christmas tree crafts? Check out these posts for some fun projects with a Christmas tree theme:

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Shark Week Learning for Kids

Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks. 

First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?

Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game. 

Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.

Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom. 

Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more. 

Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet. 

Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!

You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.

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