Wondering what Mommy Homework is??? Each week you will have an “assignment” here to share in our comments here on this site. You will love this-both sharing AND enjoying answers by others. Some of them, I compile into an ebook (contributors can resell as a product of their own–be sure to submit your email and full name when you register so I can credit you appropriately!).
The result is AWESOME!
We get to know each other…we are encouraged in our journey…and we glean super ideas from other great moms!
Ready for this week’s MH? This is a good one!
Our topic this week is “Advent Activities”
Your Assignment This Week…
It is time for Advent, the time of preparing our hearts for Christ and Christmas. I love, love, love this time of year. I love the blessing of family, the change of pace, the sweet opportunities to spend time with those I love, and the opportunity to take time with God to look back, soak Him in, and look forward. That is what Advent is all about–God, family, friends, and time to evaluate, set goals, and dream about the New Year.
This is the time of year that we LIVE OUT our most precious traditions. We have activities that the children can count on. We have meals that are a part of our MUST for this season. We have special family times that we schedule into our day each day. We plan special activities this time of year that forge relationships and tie heart strings.
So….
This week, I would love to hear what YOU are doing during Advent? How are you keeping Christ in your Christmas? How are you making room for Jesus in your activities? How are you instilling a love of God, family, and others in your children?
Give us a glimpse into your home. Share your favorite Advent Activities.
Ready to dig in? Grab a cup of tea…settle in for a bit. You will want to dig into this one sweet friends!!
Love ya!
Cindy
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Deadline–Friday at midnight CST.
One thing fun thing that we do as a family is I have 25 Christian Christmas books that I picked up at used books sales, thrift stores, rummages and gifts and I wrap each one up individually in some Christmas paper and put them in a pretty basket by the fireplace. Each day the kids take turns picking one out, opening it up and we snuggle up and read together- teaching, talking about and remembering the real reason we celebrate Christmas. After Christmas I wrap them up again and they are stored away and all ready for the next December to come! It is a fun family thing we all look forward to and will probably do until they are old enough to move out! 🙂
One thing we began a few years ago is to read all the Little House Christmas chapters. This year I am throwing in some extra winter chapters.
The boys beg me not to stop, when I say `continuing tomorrow`.
fun stuff!! i LOVE advent. we do an advent log/wreath, right now its a log, we do devotions, candles, fun stuff. We tend to get overly busy and miss half the stuff we want to do, working on that! and this year is our first year in this house, and we are still missing a Christmas box with most of our advent and Christmas books ugg… hopefully we’ll find Jotham’s journey, which we started and didn’t finish the last 3 years running! ARGH!
Our family has an Advent book. Each day, you open a door and read portions of the Christmas Story until you reach Christmas Day. The children love hearing the story each year and trying to remember what is behind the doors.
We also have a wooden calendar that has a picture of a manger and the town of Bethlehem. Each day, they open the wooden compartment to find a piece that needs to be hung on the picture. We learn about the shepherds, the gifts the wise men brought to Jesus, the innkeeper, etc.
We also talk about why we give gifts. This is a part of Christmas. As we wrap presents and give presents to others, we talk about Jesus and how He is our gift of salvation. This is the most important thing to us!
Sincerely,
Katrina Boatwright
Share your favorite Advent Activities.
I love this time of year.
In our family, Advent is all about preparing for Christ coming.
First, a new activity this year that we are LOVING is this Advent Calendar on DVD. It is fabulous! A short little ‘documentary’ each day discussing each of 25 different things about Christmas. The kids love it. We watch it in the evening, then we light our Advent wreath (the candles, that is) and have our evening prayers and devotion. We are using the “Advent & Christmas” with Fulton J. Sheen this year. (We have used it in the past, and also enjoy his “Lent & Easter” devotional).
The kids and I also do a Jesse Tree, we are using the ornaments from “Advent, Christmas Epiphany in the Domestic Church” by Catherine Fournier. We color the ornament, read from the Bible and discuss whatever comes up.
We have a ‘Spiritual Crib’ – it is an empty wooden (doll type) cradle, that usually holds books in my room. The children put a piece of yarn in the cradle each time the do a good deed, a kindness, or other work of Mercy for the baby Jesus. The goal is to have done so many good deeds that they yarn (straw) makes a nice soft bed for the baby Jesus by Christmas. (The real goal is to learn to be Christ-like in our lives, to be self-sacrificing for the love of Christ/others.)
We celebrate the Feast of St. Nicholas (Dec. 6th) by putting out our shoes on the eve of, and the children find that St. Nicholas has left them gold coins (chocolates) and small gifts in their shoes. Check stnicholascenter.org for loads of info and ideas. We celebrate this day with special food and activities.
We will be learning about St. Lucia and having a special feast this Saturday. We learn about St. Lucia and the customs surrounding her, then on Saturday morning, our eldest daughter wearing a wreath (of golden tinsel, not burning candles in an actual wreath) will serve is all breakfast of freshly made cinnamon rolls. A nice little lesson in hospitality.
Beginning on December 17th, we will add to our evening devotions- the O Antiphons – and sing each corresponding verse to “O Come Emmanuel” at that time. We discuss these, and make special tree ornaments during the day, and finish our last minute preparations for Christmas. (Gifts, baking and so on.) At this point the children are getting antsy! Our Lord will be here soon!
All our preparations naturally culminate on Christmas morning – when we begin to celebrate the Christmas season in earnest. This is the beginning of the 12 days of Christmas. Our wise men (they are still packed up until this day) will appear someplace in the house – it is a big game to be the child who finds them each day until January 6th when they naturally arrive at our Nativity scene! Our children receive 3 small gifts on the Epiphay also.
We celebrate again on January 11th (the feast of the Baptism of Christ – his 2nd manifestation) and renew our Baptismal promises.
Now – I bet you are wondering how we do all this. We don’t take a “summer vacation” we do take a December/Christmas vacation. During this month, we do only Math (and phonics for my 1st grader this year, she needs not to have a lag time right now). Other than that – it is all about the Lord for the next 4 weeks or so. All about living our faith, keeping our focus always on Him, and keeping Him in the front of our minds always, every day in all that we do. I read the children stacks of Christmas books, we make gifts, sing and learn about all the traditions and symbols of the holiday. Lots of fascinating history!
Words alone cannot describe my joy when I hear my children planning what they are going to do for the baby Jesus today. How they are going to serve each other and the rest of the family, or listening as my older children help my younger children to do good, be kind, and serve others as Christ did. It really is a magical season, isn’t it?
God Bless you all this Christmas season!
Trish Bevill
(my children are 17, 15, 8, 6, & 4)
This year, we found a nice fresh tree and put it up Thanksgiving weekend. Each night we light it before we light our Advent candle. My husband has a scripture to read each night by candle light. Then, we sing a couple of Christmas carols with all of the original lyrics if possible. There is so much theological depth in some of the old carols and often the lines that are skipped in modern versions are the ones that have the most depth and conviction and hope to them. We sing the same two each night so that we know them well by the end of the week.
We are also focusing on the ways we can bless each other and share God’s love in our family and with those around us. My 8yo has surprised my husband and I with homemade thank you cards. Little notes of love have been left for each other. We’re making special candy treats and cakes for each other and friends. We’re reading some favorite books and watching the old Christmas movies from my childhood. My husband and I are sharing stories about how we used to wait each year for favorite shows to come on tv because there were no recorders!
Bobbi Beeson
We are doing many things. One of the new things we are doing this year is to do at least one activity a day from our Advent Calendar that I made. Yesterday we made candy cane heart ornaments. Today we will each make a card and we will start a special ornament to commemorate the Unit and Lapbook we are doing on How the Grinch stole Christmas. It should be really cute.
We have also been studying Bach for Composer study and Botticelli for our Artist study and Botticelli has a lot of Nativity paintings so we have concentrated on them the last couple weeks.
After we do finish the Grinch lapbook this week we are doing a small free Nativity lapbook next week.
We have been practicing for our tradition of caroling to retired folk from our church as well as our Pastors and the singing we will be doing at a nursing home this Saturday. Practice is coming along well. Pray for good weather when we carol and time off from work for my dh so we can do it (they have been doing a lot of overtime). Oh, Rachel and Jessica sang special music at church this past Sunday too.
We are making gifts for each other and enjoying many good meals and treats. We have been reading books out of our Christmas book box and time watching Christmas movies together with popcorn and hot chocolate some nights.
The tree is decorated and the other traditional decorations are out too. We have a new decoration this year. My sister gave me a Bethlehem Village and we put it on our mantle.
We have also been doing Jesus Helpers and the girls blogged about the details of that just scroll down their blog til you find it. We each pick a persons name and do tasks for that person secretly and leave little cards that say Jesus Helper, then at the end of the week we reveal who we had for the week before and pick new names.
We are also doing notebooking with Our Christmas Journal by Sheri Graham and enjoying doing that. Writing the movies we have seen as a family and the books we read and the memories we cherish… it has been great. The boys are doing one and I am doing one also.
I have been trying to get my ornaments done, I make a new ornament for each person in our immediate family + my mom (since she spends every Christmas with us) and this year’s are not done yet.
So you see we are busy enjoying each other and trying to make this season special.
Make a memory with your kids this Christmas Season,
Debbie Phillips
my kids are 22, 19, 14, and almost 12 (birthday later this month)
The Christmas season has always been a favorite for doing something different in our homeschool and trying to make the most of the season. I try and find something fresh and new each year. This year, I feel, that I haven’t really done my part in it. It has been a tougher year, overall, for us and we have fallen short in this area.
In years past, I have done a Christmas lapbook with the kids. They enjoyed it greatly and we have it to look through each year.
I have also done the Jesse Tree ornaments.
We have followed the book by Lisa Whelchel with advent activities. This was a favorite of ours, too.
Each year, one thing that we always do is read the advent books by Arnold Ytreeide. We have read them all through several times, but continue to do so every year. This year we are in Tabitha’s Travels. The other books in the set are Jothams’ Journ;ey and Bartholomew’s Passage.
If it weren’t for homeschooling, I don’t know if we would even be celebrating advent! This is our first “official” year, and we are reading Jotham’s Journey together.
I have future plans for advent, though. I plan to buy an advent wreath on clearance after Christmas with gift money from hubby’s Grandma. We have one family tradition we’ve done, participating in our community courthouse live nativity, that I would like to add to as part of our advent celebration. Since we won’t read Jotham every year, I think we’ll have a variety of activities like: read different Christmas books, listen to audios, and do crafty activities for gifts.
I had never heard of a Jesse tree until last year, so I want to look into that more. I have a lot of information on it, thanks to homeschoolers freely sharing and would like to incorporate that into an Easter or Christmas tradition.
Thanks for all the ideas!
Blessings,
Danielle Hull
We are taking a very different tact this year. Instead of doing more, we are doing less. We had our family gift exchange Thanksgiving weekend. This has totally taken the pressure off us to shop, shop, shop!
We then put up our Christmas Tree this week and have been focusing on using only the ornaments that express Christ. Not just Nativity ornaments or stars, but also our childrens’ handprints from when they were little and ornaments that share family values which, of course, we got from Christ! We are hoping that our tree will elicit some Christ-centered conversation as people drop by for food and fellowship.
We are also trying to express Christ in going and giving this year. We are having a food distribution for the poor this next week and then have testimony time afterward with friends and family!
We read an Advent Story book the first one in the series has just recently been reprinted and CBD sells it. It is Jotham’s Journey by Arnold Ytreeide and it is excellent. There are 2 other books Bartholomew’s Passage and Tabitha’s Travels and hopefully they will be back in print again soon. We start reading on the first Sunday of Advent and read every day until Christmas Day. We have even finished reading the book (the part about the birth of Jesus) just before we went downstairs to celebrate Christmas. They really are a nice way to focus on the Lord through this season.
Lori Duncan
Each year we alternate with reading Jotham’s Journey, Bartholomew’s Passage or Tabitha’s Travels. Our kids love all the books and continually surprise me with their good memories from past years. I bought an advent wreath last Christmas that we light when we do our reading each night. I got The Best Christmas Pageant Ever from the library and we’ll start that tomorrow afternoon then they can watch the video after we’ve finished the book.
We’ve been watching alot of Christmas movies – some old and some new. I love the fact that my teens have watched White Christmas and Christmas in Connecticut with me! 🙂 I love our time just relaxing and laughing together.
Our girls have spent time this week shopping for each other and their friends, some who live nearby and go to our church and others that are in Hawaii. I let them wrap all the presents for their dad and some for each other. They love having secrets about the gifts.
We also have a little wooden tree that the kids put an ornament on each day in December. Our youngest really likes that.
I still have some decorations in the attic we need to get down so we’ll do that tomorrow and bring the nativity set down and put it by the tree. I remember the one we had when I was little that my mom bought in the early 50’s. She only paid $2 or $3 for it but it was so special to me. The camels legs were broken (she had it 20 years by the time I played with it) but every day when I’d get home from school I loved rearranging them and all the other animals.
We always went to a Christmas Eve service when I was a kid too and our church doesn’t usually have them so last year we went to another church for that. They ended the service with everyone having a candle. It was really beautiful. We just may do that again this year.
Katie Anderson
We have been having fun with an early Christmas gift – Jotham’s Journey. My son, who doesn’t usually like to sit and listen, is loving it. We read a chapter a day and it integrates the prophesies and story of Jesus.
We have in the past created bookmarks with a verse on it to hand out at restaurants with the tip, or to cashiers at the store. My children have loved making those in the past.
This Advent the boys and I are doing a Jesse Tree I made out of felt one year. We are reading a bible story that corresponds with the felt piece for the Jesse Tree at breakfast. We also have an Advent wreath we light every night for our evening prayers. This year is the first year we are doing chocolate Advent calendars everyday as well. The other new idea we are trying this year is picking out a new person or animal at the birth of Our Lord to model ourselves after that week. EXAMPLE:
the donkey – lightening the burden of others
Christmas angel – messenger of joy by saying positive and encouraging words
shepherd – doing your duties faithfully and lovingly
project idea from A Year With God, Little Way Press
Karen Gebes
We are doing a few things this year. This is the first year that we are doing something special on the four Sundays before Christmas, but we have always celebrated through the whole month leading up to Christmas Day. On Sundays we are having a family devotion, singing Christmas songs together (we are trying to memorize the lyrics to two songs per week), having a family prayer time and then walking the kids to bed by candlelight. We also have a lot of things that we are doing everyday. I went to a website where you can print one coloring page for each day, each with a scripture, when all put together tells the Christmas story. We have been doing these and practicing our songs every night. We also have a paper chain with one link for each day leading to Christmas, and written on each one is something fun for us to do that day. The kids helped me come up with creative ideas of things that do not require money or a car. Little things like making cookies together or having a Christmas movie marathon are making each day special. I also found this HUGE stocking at the dollar store and I wrote Jesus at the top. We hung it on the wall and we every time we do something nice for someone, or anything else that is worship to our Lord, we write it on a piece of paper and put it in the stocking. Our goal is to fill it by Christmas Day!
It is hard to believe only two weeks until Christmas!
Dawn Spice
We do something similar to a Jesse Tree. Some friends and I made all of our individual ornaments last year over a 3 month period. We have even used the Scriptures / Names of God / ornaments to do the Jesse Tree in one sitting in our church’s candlelight Christmas service. It is really beautiful and meaningful.
Oh, I love this time of year! But it can get very busy if we don’t make certain things a priority.
Three years ago my sister, at my request, made me a hang up scene that is made out of material. The background has a sky and then at the bottom is the ground. She made us all sorts of things to put onto it that at the end, on Christmas morning, we will add the manger and baby Jesus to the scene. It is a big thing to the kids to add the pictures.
This year we are doing an advent candle. We made the wreath that only cost me a $1 and then put some wraps on it to brighten it and added pine cones. The whole wreath only cost me $3. Then we added the different candles. We light the candle for the week and read the verses and talk about them and how they apply to our lives.
Then we have our special times of gathering around the piano and sing the beautiful Christmas songs. We watch for the different favorite Christmas favorite movies. Out comes the Christmas CD’s.
This is a blessed season and we have wanted to draw closer to the Lord Jesus and make this an extra special year even tho’ things may look bleak on the ouside.
This year my husband declared no Christmas tree. This has happened before so it didn’t change anything with us. As I am a Christian Jew we celebrate Hanukkah as well as Christmas. To me we celebrate the Festival of lights and culminate with Christmas as the day the Ultimate light entered into the world. Trees or no trees.
We go over the story of the Macabees, Judah and his family as well as the Jewish rebels that they led.We tell of the miracle that was preformed in the temple when they wanted to reconsecrate it to Y____ ( we do not write the most holy name of the Creator.) I explain to our children what happened when they found only one vial of oil or cruse to light and burn in the temple. One cruse per day is what was needed. Actually they would have needed several Gallons. As there are several places in the Temple that must be consecrated and annointed. Not to mention all of the items in the temple would have to be re-annointed and blessed. Just as we annoint and bless our homes and cleanse them of all unclean things. They too had to re- annoint all of the items and bless them. Burning the oil to consecrate the Temple is symbolic of us asking Y_____ the Father to burn out any unclean thing in us. I finish up Christmas eve at Midnight with the Christ story. As Yeshua enters the world as the ultimate light to show us how to be Holy and Consecrated to Y______ the Father. The week of Hanukkah followed with Christmas is our advent.
It may be a tad different from yours but it’s concept is the same. You are lighting the candles to symbolize the coming of Yeshua. Our Lord and Savior. We celebrate Hanakkuh to show the miracles that point to the Light of the World. We finish to Celebrate the coming of the Light. No matter what you do to celebrate, make it a time of Love, Joy, and always remember to Share Yeshua with those that you meet.
Blessings and Shalom!!
Lisa Robinson
I’m trying not to feel totally inadequate after reading the responses so far! We are really struggling with this, more so this year than others. Typically I have most of the “preparations” for Christmas done by December 1st and can just kind of go on autopilot for the rest of the month, but a family vacation last week, while wonderful, has thrown that for a major loop!
I am trying to keep the calendar as clear as possible to allow for spontaneous moments and time just relaxing together.
Does anyone else feel as though they are alone in their family in even *wanting* the focus to be on Christ’s birth? Even dh this year seems caught up more in the “what are we going to get?” mentality and using Christmas as a reason to stock up on material things.
We’re going to the Casting Crowns Christmas concert tomorrow night and I’m hoping that will put both of us in more of the true holiday spirit.
Meanwhile, I think it’s time to re-listen to some of the audios on making memories and such and think of a few ideas for the weekend.
Cari
We LOVE doing Advent. I have found it’s a great time to focus on all the activities that tend to get “politely ignored” the rest of the year. We bake cookies together , we play board games, we consciously take the time to have at least an hour of “family time” every night after dinner. It seems that so often during the year, little people will request mom or dad’s time to play Candy Land or bake cookies or play Barbies w/ me, and it so often gets the response “Not right now, Mommy’s busy” or “In a minute” and the minute never comes. We really try this time of year to slow down, and MAKE the time to fill the cup of each person in the family w/ some personal time doing the activity of their choice TOGETHER.
We also have an advent “wreath” on our coffee table. Granted, it’s not really a wreath – it’s just five pillar candles from the cheapo rack at Walmart – but we light them every night and read an Advent Story together. This year, we are really enjoying “Jotham’s Journey” by Arnold Ytreeide, but in past years we have also done “The Advent-ure of Christmas” by Lisa Whelchel that includes stories as well as activites to involve your kids in ….. making homemade candy canes was our favorite – even though they never turn out aesthetically beautiful – the kids have a BLAST making them.
As a “complement” to Advent – our wedding anniversary is Dec. 16th, so I make sure and schedule a little “honey time” in as well to really add “cement” to our marriage relationship. One great encouragement/resource I’ve found for this, is my annual participation in “SHMILY” (see-how-much-I-love-you) time.
On Christmas Eve, we culminate our Advent activities by having a Birthday party for Jesus. We make a cake complete w/ candles, sing him “Happy Birthday” and bring gifts. Usually, we have the kids choose an inexpensive gift at the store that would be something THEY would like to receive, and then we deliver them to an organization that distributes them to families in need. We have also done “Operation Christmas Child” boxes and tied them in to this celebration.
We really enjoy doing Advent as a season of bringing focus to our relationships, not only with each other but with God as well. It seems to really heighten the “others-centeredness” in our household, and really cuts down on the “But I want this…..” and turns it into “How can I bless you today?”
Hi,
We have an advent wreath, but aren’t always that good at remembering to light it. We often are out of town for weekends in December visiting family and week days are filled with so many activities that I forget.
We have special ornaments that we talk about, which remind us of the names of Jesus. We also always read the ‘real’ Christmas story from the Bible before we open our Christmas gifts.
Every day is a time of celebrating Christ and the salvation that he gives to those who trust in Him.
Wishing everyone comfort and joy,
Jill
We spend a lot of time curled up on the couch reading Christmas stories, most of which focus on the real meaning of Christmas. We’ve chosen not to make Santa Claus a part of our Christmas celebration, because we wanted our children to always know what Christmas is about. It’s been neat this year to hear our 4 year old son say often when seeing people consumed with materialism or the “stuff” of Christmas: “They must have forgotten what Christmas is all about, right?!”
We also focus alot on what we can give to others — making cookies to give to the neighbors, gifts for Sunday School teachers, etc. Our focus in that is John 3:16 — that because God loved the world He GAVE His Son. We want to help cultivate a giving heart in our children.
Christmas morning is always special here — we sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus and the kids blow out candles that we put in their cinnamon biscuits (our traditional Christmas breakfast).
My childrens absolute favorite activity is the decorating of the Jesse Tree.
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I hope someone will be able to benefit from my sharing, maybe for next year.
The ornaments are printed front and back so that I don’t have to look up which bible verse is used each day.
We love watching Christmas movies, reading books and listening to music that we borrow from the library. It saves money and space.