Counting the Omer is a special time of celebration in honor of the anticipation of the fulfilled promise Jesus told his disciples when He said he would send them the Comforter. In fact, it goes back even farther than that. This counting up to the day of Pentecost is a commandment by God in Leviticus 23.
“And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord.” – Leviticus 23:15-16
The count-up begins after The Feast of Firstfruits and it’s a wonderful opportunity to teach your children about how much we can trust in God by focusing on the promises of God during this time.
If you’re interested in learning more about The Feast of Firstfruits and Pentecost and how they apply to Christians please do check out my other posts on that.
But for now, I’d like to share a really fun way to enjoy Counting the Omer with your family.
Counting the Omer Tree Supplies
- 1-2 fruit trees or artificial tree [option 1][option 2] [option 3] [option 4]
- 50 small burlap bags
- 50 very sticky fruit foam stickers
- 50 kraft paper tags
- [thrive_2step id=’4296′]50 printed verses with promises of God on them (get yours here)[/thrive_2step]
- sharpie marker (and/or paint markers for a more decorative option) (or fun number stickers like these)
- [optional] various stickers to decorate tags (especially for day #50)
- scissors
Making the Counting the Omer Tree Instructions
First gather your supplies to make up the trees.
For the tree you have a few different options. You can buy an artificial tree, so long as it has many branches on it. We chose to go with two real fruit trees because the count-up begins on The Feast of Firstfruits so it seemed appropriate. And also because we thought it would be a great tradition to plant the trees on the day of Pentecost each year. So it adds another cool tradition for your kids to look forward to.
We ended up needing two trees to be able to hold all of the bags, plus in order for the trees to bear fruit they need another tree of the same fruit in a different species to cross-pollinate each other.
But you can also get an artificial tree like this one that you can use every year. This is totally your preference.
Next you’ll want to add the fruit stickers to each burlap bag. Make sure the stickers you choose are sticky enough. The foam fruit ones I purchased here are super sticky and stuck to the burlap bags very nicely.
For the burlap bags they do not need to be big at all. The only thing going in them is a little folded up piece of paper with the verse for each day [thrive_2step id=’4296′](you can get yours to print for free here)[/thrive_2step]. You could add a little treat for your kids in it too, if you want. I opted not to do that because I wanted the reading of God’s Word to be the treat in and of itself. Although I do have some Bible-related gifts for our kids that they will receive on the last day we count (Pentecost). 🙂
Next add numbers to each of the tags. You can probably make them so much more pretty than I did. I just used a sharpie. But if your kids are old enough then this would be a great project you could do with them. Have them decorate each one or use fun number stickers. There are lots of ways you could do it.
And be sure to make number 50 extra special. 🙂 I just drew a bunch of little confetti. But I think a bunch of star stickers or something would be really fun too.
Print out your verses. You can pick your own verses or [thrive_2step id=’4296′]use the ones I have in this free printable here[/thrive_2step]. The ones in the printable are a lot prettier than the ones pictured. Since I decided to make them into a freebie I did some more fun things with them.
After you print them out fold them up and put each one into each bag. There were about five or so verses pertaining particularly to the giving of the Holy Spirit that I made sure were in the bags for the final week leading up to Pentecost.
Close up your bags and attach each tag, setting them all aside to put up on the tree(s).
Finally we made a fun time of putting all of the little bags on the trees with our kids. I put together a playlist for The Feast of Firstfruits on my Amazon Music app. All with songs about Jesus’ resurrection and the promises of God, etc. You can click here to see the playlist I put together if you’re interested.
And as we hung all the bags we talked to our kids about what we’re doing and why we count the omer, what we are counting up to, etc.
Counting the Omer Instructions
I’ve read multiple opinions about whether to countdown or count up for the Omer. I liked the thought of counting up so that’s what we’ve chosen to do. But you’re welcome to do it any way you’d like.
And basically what we do is each day we will set aside some time to find the bag for that day and read the verse with the promise of God on it for that day. You can talk about the verse with your kids a bit, discuss the promise that is inside and maybe talk about how God has fulfilled that particular promise in your own life.
What you do and how in depth you get with it each day will depend on the age of your kids. Our kids are still so little so we don’t do much more than read the verse. When they get older and have longer attention spans I would love to incorporate a family devotional each day too.
I hope you and your family enjoy this Counting the Omer activity together and that it helps you to keep God’s promises in mind each day that you count up to the very special day of Pentecost, when we celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit.
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