We decided to try something new this year

Normally, each Christmas season is filled with a little Christmas baking, lots of Christmas reading, and lots of Christmas Crafts. In the past I have always just picked up lots of books at the local library as well as from our own home library, and as for the crafts well let's just say Google is my best friend. :)

This year a cyber-friend posted some great Christmas links on a favorite Homeschooling forum of mine. I visited the links and found one that really stood out from the others, what I found among the long list of Christmas links was a real treasure. The link was for a treasury of Christmas activities, crafts, readings, and the best part was the it was all centered around the real reason for the Christmas season - The birth of Jesus! So hubby and I fast got to work rewriting the bible verses given to match our KJV Bibles ( I just LOVE the language and poetry of the KJV), and then we printed the pages, cut them apart, glued them into some colored construction paper, and assembled them as a paper chain all per the directions.

Now each day the children pull one link from the chain, I read the Scripture quote on the page, Daddy reads the Bible passage (On days when there is no Bible passage but rather a story I will read the story and Daddy will read the Scripture Quote), and then we all sit down as a family to make the craft or do the activity.

Day 1 of our Advent chain our activity was to set up our Nativity set, which we did of course, but then we also decided to go one step farther and paint a Nativity Scene on our windows for all to see!

Day 2 we made lovely paper angels with tissue paper wings. The boys particularly enjoyed using the glitter!
















My purple angel got cut off the photo a bit, but I'm sure you'll forgive me, as I was taking the image blindly because my camera was stepped on and broken (that's a whole 'nother post). Hubby made the orange angel, S made the red one, and B made the blue one, L opted out of the angel making but that large puddle of paint beneath the angels is his creation.

Day 3 we made a second angel craft, this time we made hand and footprint angels, of which I don't have photos, but trust me they are adorable! What a keepsake those are because they are a part of my precious children.

Day 4 (yesterday) we created Whisper Tubes to help us celebrate the joy of the season.




















I apologize for the blurriness of the last picture, again because of the broken camera we were taking pictures with one of our MP3 Players and obviously the quality is considerably lower. Again L decided that he would not participate in this activity but rest assured that we are including the dear boy as much as he will willingly allow. While we all were doing this activity he decided that he would try and eat a couple pom pom's, a perfectly acceptable food group for a 17 month old!

Today we have not yet done our advent activity of the day, but I will update you if not daily then at least once a week with what we have read and done for our Advent Chain. I have to say they boys are enjoying their crafts, I am enjoying the crafts, and we all look forward to the scripture reading each day. I think this is the best advent project yet! I suppose after the holidays I'll have to get to work writing my own advent chain for next year with all new crafts and activities, or maybe we'll just do the same one and simply make different crafts, who knows?