In "researching" (reading blogs) what other people do with their kids, I came across a lot of really great (if WAY-too-ambitious-for-us) ideas for homemade and meaningful Advent calendars and activities. Since I am in no way crafty, I modified some of those ideas and made them ours!
We started with 24 little red bags, numbered them with stickers, and let the girls go crazy with Nativity stickers and stars.
Then we set them up on the windowsill, and I talked through the logistics with them... that every day when we wake up, we'll open the bag with the number of the day until December 25, which is Jesus' birthday. Inside every bag, we'll find:
A. Bible reference (gleaned from this blog)
B. Jesse Tree pictures
C. A description of the day's Fun Activity
D. A Special Treat
We save the first two for the evening, when Dad comes home and we can do the devotional as a family. The girls color the pictures while Dan reads the passage, and then we hang the "ornaments" on our Jesse Tree, which this year, is a silver tinsel tabletop Christmas tree.
Today, the passage was Isaiah 11:1-9, which talks about Jesus' heritage (A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit) and His nature. It's WAY above the girls' heads at this point, but we told them that the tree is called a Jesse tree because Jesse was Jesus' great-great-great.....grandpa. They love to have Dan read to them, they love to color, and they love to hang ornaments, so it's a win for them all around! And I know they're soaking in bits and pieces of the rest.
The girls were pretty excited to find Bag 1 this morning, although it eluded them for a while, camouflaging itself in among the bags with two-digit numbers containing a 1.
We sat down in the living room and pulled out the contents. I convinced (ordered) the girls to wait until after breakfast to eat their candy, and we read the activity of the day:
Plant seeds of Joy to grow grass for Baby Jesus' manger.
I totally lifted this idea from one of the blogs, and I now am unable to find it to give it credit. Yikes. But the idea is that the girls will get to plant a seed every time they do something sweet, like share, or obey, or say "yes ma'am" or "yes sir" without being prompted throughout Advent, and then on Christmas Eve, we'll "harvest" so that we can line the manger in anticipation of Jesus' birth. Taking care of babies is something they DO understand, as tending to their dolls is a full-time affair around here. The girls are LOVING the concept, although they're already trying to "earn" seeds by giving me hugs. Which, I'm not going to lie, does work.
Our sowing fields are two small flower pots wrapped in wrapping paper and filled with dirt (which the girls referenced... repeatedly... in the video). Our seeds are chives, which have the shortest plant-to-sprout timeframe of all of the seed packets that I browsed last night. Every time the girls plant a seed, they ask me if it's growing. I'm excited to see if it all works!
After breakfast, the girls did get to eat their Peppermint Patties. It seems that Izzy may have inherited her Aunt Chelle's hyperactive response to peppermint... I caught the tail end on the video, but she'd been jumping and spinning for a LONG time before I managed to track down the camera!
Another Advent-y activity that we're trying out is wrapping up 23 Christmas books (on Christmas Eve, we'll read the Christmas story from Luke) and letting the girls unwrap one each night before bed. Unfortunately, we don't have 23 Christmas books, nor are we willing to purchase that many, but I did cheat and check out some Christmas books from our library (due AFTER Christmas) and wrap them up to supplement the supply :) If anyone has any suggestions for really good Christmas books, we'd love to hear them and add to our library!
Tonight's selection was "The Twelve Days of Christmas."
2 comments:
that is going to be one strong smelling manger
GPa
You're such an awesome Mom! Thanks for making the rest of us look like slack-dogs!
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