One of our favorite Christmas traditions in the advent calendar that my mom made for me when I was a child. Each day we add on ornament to the tree and by Christmas day it's all decorated. It's simple and charming. I am especially fond of the rick-rack on it:)
This year I have hung the advent calendar in our learning room so we can add our ornament each day as we do our *morning board*.Another Advent tradition for us is to read through the Christmas story each night using The Advent Book, by Jack and Kathy Stockman.
This book was a gift when our kiddos were much smaller and is a very well-loved and much-anticipated book each December. The illustrations are amazing and each page (day) has a new door to open that reveals the next part of the Christmas story. We read from the beginning, adding one new door each night.
A note of caution: this book can become so well-loved that competition as to who opens the new door can ensue. I suggest taking turns:)
Another book that we enjoy is The ADVENTure of Christmas by Lisa Welchel. It's a wonderful resource for the *rest of the story* behind our modern-day customs, great activities and ideas, even recipes.
Something new for us this year is to create a Jesse tree. I've been reading/hearing about them for a few years now~it seems like such a wonderful way to teach your children more about the Scriptures and the background to the familiar Christmas texts in Matthew and Luke.
I was SO excited to find this beautiful resource from A Holy Experience (whose blog I love!). If you subscribe to their daily updates (and you'll want to!) they will send you the link for the free download.
I've been busy preparing mine and we are set to start this morning. I know my kiddos will love this activity~and I'm hoping it will become one of our treasured traditions.
Tell me how your family celebrates Advent.
1 comment:
we do a lot of the same things you do. we have a countdown calendar that is a snowman with a snowflake that you move from day to day. we also LOVE and use the ADVENTure of Christmas book, and this year we're also adding the Jesse tree stuff from Ann's blog! We have one other book too, it's called ADOREnaments and there are 12 names of Jesus with a daily reading and then you hang the little ornament on the tree each day. And we do the book thing where we unwrap a book every day. I need to post about this, thanks for reminding me! LOL =)
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