Advent Board

Our family loves celebrating Advent each year.  Here is how we counted down to Christmas last year.  This is our version for this year, and hopefully for many years to come!

The big question is how do we keep our children firmly rooted in their faith and in the religious aspects of the season while still allowing them to feel like they are able to enjoy the more secular aspects of this time of year?  Introducing the Advent Board!

I put this together in a few hours time and am really looking forward to using it!  Here are the seperate aspects of it.

 Our "Road to Bethlehem" is an image of the path Joseph and Mary must travel to reach Bethlehem, where Baby Jesus will be born.  Mary & Joseph have velcro attached to their back, and velcro is attached to the road.  Each day (and there are 28 days of Advent this year), the kids will move them a step closer to the manger in Bethlehem.

 Our Jesse Tree.  A Jesse Tree is another way to countdown to Christmas.  Each day we do activities centering around a different story from the Bible, starting with Creation and counting down until the birth of Jesus.  The activities include attaching an ornament w/ a symbol of that day's story to the tree with velcro, reading that story from the Bible, singing a related song, and saying a related prayer.  I created the ornaments and put together the daily reflections based on other Jesse Trees that I found online.

This is our "secular" section of our Advent Board.  I simply laminated a piece of white paper over a festive piece of scrapbook paper.  Each day I will add a special activity for the kids to do, usually holiday related (i.e. Drink Peppermint Hot Chocolate, Watch a Christmas Movie, etc.).

How does your family countdown to Christmas?

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