Advent Activities

These are the special things that we're doing this year in anticipation of celebrating our Savior's birth.

We started reading this book last night:

Bartholomew's Passage

The book is designed to read a portion every night until Christmas morning. We read the first book, Jotham's Journey, last year and loved it! The kids (and their parents, truth be told) couldn't get enough of it and it was hard to stop reading when we were supposed to every night! This Bartholomew's Passage is the 2nd book (we own Jotham's Journey, but this one is on loan to us from my friend, Anna), and I'm glad to know that there is a 3rd book (and now there is an Easter book also!).

We're also going to be starting this homemade advent activity on December 1st:

We've got 25 of these little suckers! The numbers were drawn by mama, but colored in by all four children. Each bag will contain a small item. (Notice I say "will contain"...I'm still finishing this up...but it will be complete and they'll all be under the tree by Thursday!)

Here is a list of the items that will go in the 25 bags:

1. Quarter
2. Grape candy
3. Smiley sticker
4. Toy fish
5. Birthday candle
6. Bell
7. Fish crackers
8. Cotton ball
9. Piece of a map
10. Soap
11. Heart sticker
12. Cross
13. Packet of salt
14. Sand
15. Flower
16. Raisins
17. Seeds
18. Christmas carol
19. Rock
20. Crumpled foil
21. Mustard seed
22. Dove (toy or photo)
23. Small scrap of woolly material
24. Blue marble
25. Picture of a baby

And HERE is a list of the scriptures that each of those items represent.

You can read about bookoodles of Advent calendars and activities and Jesse Trees all over the internet. I decided on this one because:

- Each day refers us back to scripture, instead of just a fun activity (not that I'm against fun, but I love this tying back to scripture and the whole reason for Christmas!)

- I could pretty easily lay hands on all the items to go in the bags

- I had lots of brown paper bags!

The children will take turns opening these bags every night starting Thursday - and I know they're really going to enjoy this!

And here is another fun little thing we're doing - and all it cost us was some wrapping paper!

All those flat, book-shaped packages under our tree, are...books! We have (if I counted correctly) 17 Christmas books that we've collected over the years. They range from spiritual (like this) to not-so-spiritual (like this). Most of them were gifts we received...and I knew the children would have fun taking turns unwrapping them one at a time as the days go by, and sitting down and reading them together (again!).

And finally, during the last 7 days before Christmas, we'll do this nativity activity (say that 5 times fast!):

What God Wants for Christmas Nativity Kit

We've done this every year for about 3 years now...but the youngest ones need to do it again, and the older ones will love to do it again!

(I picked up most of these things (like Jotham's Journey and "What God Wants for Christmas") at after-Christmas sales for very good prices. I then packed them away with our Christmas stuff in the attic, and had a nice surprise waiting for me when I took down all our stuff the next year!)