Lilypie Fifth Birthday tickers Lilypie Third Birthday tickers

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Advent Countdowns

Here are some of the ways that we are counting down to Christmas this year.

Jesse Tree

A Jesse Tree is an interactive symbol of our countdown to the birth of Jesus.  Each day we read a scripture and put up a new ornament that symbolizes that scripture.  The scriptures start at creation and highlight each important section of the bible down to Jesus being born, and his attributes.  Ours is simply a cut-out of brown paper for the tree with a homemade library pocket full of these cute paper ornaments.  Every morning until Christmas, M will pull out that days ornament, tape it onto one of the tree's branches, and we will read that particular story from her toddler bible.

Journey to Bethlehem Advent Calender
I was trying to think of an interactive visual calender that would help M understand what this season of Advent is all about.  I thought what she would understand most would be Mary waiting for her baby to be born, so that's what I went with.  This is a little picture of Mary & Joseph placed on one end of a ribbon, with a picture of Bethlehem on the other end.  Every morning she will cut a little bit of the string and move Mary & Joseph closer to Bethlehem, which they will reach on Christmas Eve.

Candy Advent Calender

This was super simple and took only about an hour to make total.  I cut and assembled library pockets out of Christmas patterned paper, and strung them up on a ribbon as a garland.  After numbering each pocket I slipped a piece of candy inside each pocket.  After dinner every day, we'll share this piece of candy and count down to Christmas.

Manger Padding
Every time M does a good thing like sharing with her brother or obeying us, she can come get a piece of hay from the little jar and place it in the center of our Advent wreath.  By the time Christmas rolls around, hopefully we will have a nice full bed for Baby Jesus to sleep on!

1 comment:

  1. Such creative ideas! I'm totally going to use some of these!

    ReplyDelete