Evergreen trees are so beautiful and regal. Especially when they are standing strong against the snowy winter weather. Today we are sharing a book that explores the legend behind why evergreen trees get to keep their leaves, and pairing it with some fun winter crafts for kids!

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Why Evergreens Keep Their Leaves was written by Annemarie Riley Guertin and illustrated by Helena Pérez García. This sweet story follows a small cardinal named Little Redbird who gets knocked out of his tree by a wind gust and hurts his wing. Since he can’t fly south for the winter, he wanders around and tries to find a new home. He asks the different trees for help sheltering him from the cold winter weather, but each of them refuses him. Until he comes across the evergreen trees. The fir, spruce, and juniper trees are happy to help the little bird, and they are rewarded when the winter comes.

This story of kindness and compassion reminds the reader of the importance of caring for others through a winter fable about evergreen trees and red birds. The illustrations are gorgeous, using bright colors to highlight the change from fall to winter, and showcase the vivid redbird and evergreen trees against the wintry setting.

Fork Tree Painting

The beautiful illustrations inspired us to create our own evergreen tree paintings. First, I poured green paint onto a plate and gave my daughter a fork. I encouraged her to dip the fork flat into the paint and place it onto a sheet of dark blue paper. I reminded her to make less prints as she made her way up the tree, so it had a triangle shape.

After that, we dipped a clean fork into white paint and ran our fingers along the tines to make splatter “snow” over the tree and the background. She had so much fun painting with a fork, and we loved the painting we got at the end.

Related Post: Pick a Pine Tree Book and Activities

How Many Needles?

This is an activity that you can do with real pine needles, or with toothpicks if you don’t have pine trees nearby. Get out some play dough (brown if you have it), and roll it out together to create long branch shapes. Lay out your pine needles or toothpicks nearby along with some dice. Depending on how high you want to count, you can use 1 or 2 dice. Take turns rolling the dice and then adding that many needles to your play dough branch. If you want to make it a competition, you can choose a goal number and the first person who adds that many needles wins!

Related Post: Exploring Winter with Little Owl’s Snow

Cardinal Craft

To bring the cardinal in the story to life, we decided to have some fun with shapes. We are working on scissor skills, so I drew a large circle, a small circle, a small half circle and a small rectangle onto red paper. Then I drew two more small rectangles  and a small triangle onto orange paper, and had my daughter cut them all out. Next, we folded the circle in half and glued the two sides together. This makes the cardinal’s body. Then we glued the small half circle to the middle of the folded side to make the wing. The small circle was glued to one end of the body to make the head, and the small red rectangle is attached to the other end to make the tail. Finally, we glued the two small rectangles to the bottom of the body to be the legs. Lastly, we drew a face onto the head and attached the small orange triangle as the beak.

What are your favorite winter crafts for kids? Share in the comments below!

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