Advent

Today is December 1 - the first day of advent. I wanted to do something special with my family and so we are celebrating advent this year. I am very excited. I found a really neat book that I am very satisfied with called The Family Book of Advent. Tonight I talked about the candles and the evergreen garland. The candle we lit tonight was the Hope candle. We had an activity where I just kept telling them it was coming and then I would say soon, real soon. Then I handed them a bottle of soda and had them to shake it and we watched the bubbles. We talked about what happened when we opened the bottle and how the people had to wait for year for the King to come. They enjoyed it - especially the fact that they got to taste the soda afterwards.
Zion got to light the candle tonight so of course I had to talk about fire safety and never touching matches or fire. I will let a different child light it each night.





 

 

Everyone shook the bottle and watched the bubbles and then I opened it. It did not spew everywhere like it would have if I would have had a real bottle of soda. We don't drink soda but someone had given me one for volunteer appreciation so I poured the can of soda into an old water bottle because they were supposed to be able to see the bubbles. They still got the idea though.

Then we looked at our scripture and put our bulb on our Names of Jesus wreath. Tonight's name was King.

At the end of advent we will have 15 balls with names on them. I think it is going to be very beautiful. I love the different activities with each night and they are all easy to prepare for.

For us, at the end we will have a birthday party for Jesus. I am still praying for ideas for this part. I really want my kids to know that Christmas is about Jesus and the gifts are just extra but Jesus was the ultimate gift. I think we may participate in some of the outreaches that our church does as well to really making giving a part of our Christmas.