What you will need for great family fun (and significant learning) during Advent:
- A Quarter
- Several varieties of grapes (or grape flavored items)
- Smiley sticker
- A little “surprise” in a brown paper bag (it would be great if were full of gummy fish!)
- A birthday candle
- Bell
- “Goldfish” fish-shaped crackers
- Watch “weather on the 8’s” on the weather channel or go to weather.com and put in your zip code
- Piece of a map (or you could do this devo in the car using your Nav system)
- Sand dollar (the bigger the better)
- Make homemade valentines out of Christmas paper or old Christmas cards
- Place cards with each person’s name on them around a table set with one extra chair (that place card should read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”)
- Packet of salt or salt shaker
- Sand (this is a great day to go to the beach!)
- Flowers (silk)
- Raisins
- Seeds
- A wrapped gift
- A candy cane
- Crumpled foil
- Mustard seed
- Dove (a dove ornament will do)
- Small scrap of wool
- Blue marble (and a globe if you’ve got one)
- Picture of your child as a baby and their birth announcement (if you have one).
Family Advent Countdown:
November 30 – Day of preparation! Advent is a season of preparation for the birth of Jesus, the Messiah. Today is a day of preparation for Advent – today is a good day to collect the “things” you will need for the first week of Advent. Today is also a good day to get out your Advent Calendar and hang it somewhere that everyone can see. Pick up an Advent Devotional booklet as a means of supplementing your own preparation for the coming of the Christ child. Talk with your child about what it means to be prepared for the arrival of a guest or a new baby. What are the all the things you would need to do to get ready? (If you’re having guests this Christmas season, this is a good opportunity to plan for who is going to do what in your family to prepare for their arrival.)
December 1 – A quarter! That equals 25 cents. But 25 also stands for the number of days till Christmas, when God gave us His best present. Jesus told about one woman’s gift and the way she gave it. Read: Mark 12:41-44. (This is a great opportunity to teach your kids how to use the bible. Teach them how to find the Book title in the table of Contents, turn to the beginning of that book, then find the chapter and finally the verses. Even if they can’t read yet, they can find the numbers.)
Talk about what your family is going to “give” this Christmas (not what everyone is hoping to “get”). This is a good time to clean out “old” toys and to talk about giving gifts that don’t “cost” anything: singing carols at a nursing home, sending Christmas cards to military service men, making cookies for the fire-fighters, giving hugs to everyone who comes to church.
Find a printable version here: Carmen’s Family Advent Countdown