Easter Calender

I know I've said this before, but I LOVE being Catholic!  We get to celebrate 50 awesome days of Easter!  I made this simple Easter calender using ribbon and ovals cut from my Cricut on spring colored scrapbook paper.  I numbered them, wrote a fun activity on the back of each egg, and every day starting on Easter, we do the activity for that day.  When we are done, we turn the egg around so that the number is no longer showing.  Cute, huh?  If you do a countdown leading UP to Easter, this would be fun for you next year too!

P.S.  That cross on the bottom is a neat calender from Catholic Icing; check it out!

St. Nicholas Day

Today is the feast day of St. Nicholas so we took the opportunity to learn about the real St. Nick and his relationship to Santa.  It was fun to be able to celebrate a "little Christmas" in the middle of Advent.

When she woke up she discovered that her shoes were outside and had been filled with candy by St. Nicholas!  This is a fun St. Nicholas Day tradition that I've heard a lot about and hope to continue next year.

Yay!  Candy!

We watched Veggie Tales: Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving, which I was excited to find on instant Netflix through our Wii.

We read And Now We Call Him Santa Claus by Kay Tutt, which was a great story that explained very simply that St. Nicholas was the first Santa Claus

We cut out, colored, and assembled this fun St. Nicholas playset which M had fun playing with. 

After her nap we plan on reading  Dream Snow by Eric Carle.  We are also going to attempt to pick a couple of toys to give away in the spirit of St. Nicholas.  Wish us luck!

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!