A New ADVENTure

When I was a child, I never really heard the word, "advent," outside of those little candy holders that you punched out a piece of foil from every day in the month of December until Christmas. I am a chocolate lover, so that was great fun for me...building anticipation to get that coveted piece of melty sweet goodness! Some years, my mom would hang up a row of lollipops on the wall and we'd get to eat one of those each day.  But, I never really dug any deeper.

As an adult, I'd heard the term spoken of amongst friends who celebrated, but I really didn't know what it meant beyond it being some sort of countdown. 

Once we had children, and especially after Hubs was saved, we really wanted the focus on Christ during the holiday season.  We've tried a number of different things and while they were worthwhile and fun, I wanted something more.

So I started looking into this whole Advent thing after I caught wind of it through a few blogs that I read.  I found many great and FREE resources to try out(I'll share those later in the post!), but while they all had many great components, I felt as if they just weren't the right fit for us just yet.  Then I happened upon Truth in the Tinsel. What a wonderful resource this is!  It has 24 hands on activities to do with your preschooler/early elementary aged children.  There is a Bible scripture reference to read, and discussion topics for each day so that through the month of December, your children can learn about the arc of Christ from the prophesies of his coming to his birth.  I am so glad to have stumbled across this ebook and I am excited to embark on this Advent journey, along with many others this Christmas season!

Here is our homemade Advent calendar.  I got the idea to use paper bags to hold each days supplies from Carisa over at  1+1+1=1. So I painted the numbers 1-24 on them and put each days craft supplies inside and then printed out and staple the clue cards to each one. I hung a green ribbon up and clipped up the paper bags with clothespins that I painted green and red.

We've decided to forgo our regular large Christmas tree this year and use the small one that we typically put in the children's bedroom as our Jesse tree, adding each ornament after we make it every day.  The kids are super excited about this and Bub keeps walking up and down and counting the bags. :) Looks like the beginning of a fantastic ADVENTure. ;)

Here are some of the other Advent resources I found:
Free Jesse Tree Printables and Downloads
Free Advent Devotional from Ann Voskamp
Ideas on How to Make Your Own Jesse Tree and Ornaments

If you decide to use Truth in the Tinsel as well(which is only $4.99!), Mama Jenn made some really cute printables to go along with it here on her blog and they are totally FREE! :)

I look forward to sharing more with you as the countdown to CHRISTmas goes on!