After attending the conference I waited and waited until Christmas time to see what I could make with the trees.
I asked parents to leave them outside the gate and slowly but surely they started to arrive. I quickly got to work trimming them and getting the trunks ready to use. I tried using pruning shears, but my hands kept getting sore. I ended up borrowing a saw and discovered something unexpected…
there was sap EVERYWHERE.
In the end I had a few sets of permanently stained clothes (how do you get sap out?) and a couple ‘blocks’ from the trunks. Those I had to leave out for days while the sap dried out. I also didn’t think that some of the families would bring in HUGE trees. I had to cut them in half so I wouldn’t need a ladder all the time. I borrowed the chop saw from maintenance and tried making natural blocks for the kids, but they had very odd shapes with knots all over the place.
Next year I’m going to do what a teacher in West Hollywood did. She just set up the trees and created a ‘forest’ that the kids would decorate. That seems like a much simpler solution!