The Names of Jesus Advent Chain

I know, I know I just posted about Thanksgiving sneaking up on me and here I am writing about Christmas! Yes, I am currently working on Christmas posts. I wanted to share this one early just in case you are planning some of your December activities already.

I have wanted to go over the Names of Jesus with my kids as a study for awhile. This year I thought it would be appropriate to do during the Christmas season. I found an online Names of Jesus study at Easy Fun School and based this Advent chain off of the scope and sequence found there. The chains only contain the name and the Bible reference. Check out Easy Fun School’s site for in-depth activity ideas for each name.

Since purple is usually a color associated with royalty, I decided to make our paper chain purple and silver. I printed out the template on shimmer cardstock by Core’dinations. I was worried that the ink would rub off right away, but it didn’t. I did need to let it dry for a few minutes before cutting. If the ink gives you problems, you can set the ink with Kryon Preserve It! by lightly spraying the paper before cutting.

I made the hanger for the chain out of a white, sparkly pipe cleaner, ribbon, and snowflake garland. We will hang this up on December 1st and remove a chain each day until Christmas.

Click to download the Names of Jesus Advent Chain.

You may also want to check out the additional Christmas printables I have available. More coming soon.

I plan on flip-flopping Advent chains each year. In the past we have used this advent chain created by my friend Cassie (yes, she is real!—lol). I love how Advent Chains have become a December tradition in my household.

What are some of your family Christmas Traditions?

P.S. I will also be using The Names of Jesus ornaments from Bible Story Printables to go along with our study. I’ll be blogging about that later. :) I also will be posting a Children’s Christmas book series at the end of this month! Make sure you subscribe to my blog so you don’t miss a thing!

Wrapping Up Christmas with Little Star

This Christmas season we've been reading books from our Christmas book box and doing activities relating to the books. One book I had been eyeing was Little Star by Anthony DeStefano. I received this book to review and it was a perfect way to end out holiday celebration. 

Summary: Little Star, often over-looked and ignored, was the littlest star in the sky. While all the other stars were trying to shine their brightest for the new-coming king in order to earn a reward, Little Star was left out. Finally the day came when the king was born, but the stars were disappointed to see a baby born in a dirty stable---surely they had been fooled. Little Star however, had compassion and did his best to shine for the baby king.

This was a touching story and a fun way to explain to children why there is a star on the top of a Christmas tree.  My preschooler loved looking at the pictures in the book. Mark Elliott did a wonderful job portraying the characters in the story.  I liked that the book allowed me to have another opportunity to talk with my little girls about the true meaning of Christmas. It is a perfect addition to our Christmas book box.

Now usually I would have done an activity to go along with this book, but since we received it after Christmas, I was just plum worn out from being creative—lol. I do like the handprint Christmas tree idea from Adventures in Mommy-Land, and am going to try to remember to do it with the girls next year.

You can get a head start on next year’s Christmas book box and pick this up at Amazon:

 Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for free to review through Blogging for Books from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group, but was not financially compensated in any way. The opinions expressed here are my own.

Birthday Party for Jesus

My Birthday, Jesus’ Birthday by Holly Davis

Summary:  This book shows children how Jesus’ birth was very similar to theirs—and yet very different.  Children are drawn to the colorful illustrations as they see why Jesus birthday is so special.

This week we made a "Happy Birthday Jesus" banner to hang on our wall. It will be one of our decorations for our birthday party for Jesus on Christmas day.

Items needed:
Foam nativity stamps (I picked mine up at Hobby Lobby)
paper plates
paint
banner paper

Spread one color paint on each plate. We picked certain stamps to go with each color so that I wouldn't have to wash them while we were working.


After the paint dried, I printed out the letters onto colored paper and we cut then glued them onto the banner. Right before Christmas we'll decorate the banner with streamers and balloons.  We’ll make our special birthday cake for Jesus and eat that for breakfast (yes, breakfast!) on Christmas day. You can find the recipe and other Jesus birthday party ideas here:


For more Christmas ideas check out:



For More Book/Craft ideas see:
stART : A Mommy's Adventures
Read. Learn. Explore.

Opening the Gift

 

Book Read Today:  Baby Jesus by McGraw Hill
Songs we learned:  Away in the Manger and Luke 2:11 from Songs for Saplings

I told the girls that they could open a gift today. Inside the green gift-box were mini nativity figurines (See myCHRISTmas Toddler Nativity Box for more details.)

I ended up putting two mini-nativity sets in the box.  The girls had fun rummaging around in the straw, finding the figures.  I read them the Christmas story board book and they held up the figurine we were reading about.

My 2yr. old was excited to find baby Jesus. We talked about how Jesus is God’s gift to us.

And we are the gift God wants.

CHRISTmas Tot School

Wow! It's December already! This month we're taking things easy and centering our fun and learning activities around Christmas.

Books we read this week:  Christmas in the Manger by Nola Buck; God's Christmas Gift by Nell Navillus, The Mitten by Jan Brett

Songs we learned:  Away in the Manger and Luke 2:11 from Songs for Saplings

  

Following lines and tracing is a new skill for Lil Apple. I printed this Christmas tracing sheet and laminated it. She had fun coloring-er scribbling on it with the dry-erase crayons. Then she had even more fun erasing using the special glove eraser that came with the crayons.

I thought this Animals with Jesus story was so cute when I saw it on 1+1+1=1's blog. I printed it out as multiple pages to a page and placed the pages in a baseball card holder. That way it will fit nicely in my dd's notebook. We read the story and talked about the animals. Then we pulled out our Little People and placed different animals by Baby Jesus.

To practice fine motor skills, I placed a bunch of jingle bells in a bowl and had her place them in a snowman ice-cube tray. This was her favorite activity of the week.

We did a little letter learning this week too. We were doing a letter review week with bigger sis so she joined in.

She's so neat with her Do-a-dot markers---not! :) She enjoys making the paint splatter. We're working on how to use the markers gently.

Our Other CHRISTmas Tot school posts:
CHRISTmas Toddler Nativity Box
CHRISTmas Tot school: More Preparation

For More Tot School Ideas check out:

Our Jesse Tree

We’ve done a Jesse Tree in the past, but after reading Ann Voskamp’s beautifully written Jesse Tree devotional, I knew we needed to do it again this year.

The Jesse Tree represents the family tree of Jesus. It tells the story of God's salvation plan, starting in Genesis and continuing through the Old Testament to the birth of Jesus.

We started out by reading three days worth of devotionals (we started late and I’m going to try my hardest to keep up).  After talking about what we read, I handed my 3 kids a roll of banner paper and the printed ornaments. It was up to them to create our Jesse tree.


I was so impressed at how well they worked together (My son didn’t want his picture taken but he did help out.) They decided to draw a horizontal branch.  Then behind the branch they drew the four seasons. The bottom paper on the left is the “stump” from which the shoot grows.  We have a clear plastic pocket holding the symbols for the rest of the month on the stump.


My prayer is that during this Christmas season my family cherishes the moments we spend together reading the Word.  May these not  be words that go in one ear and out the other, but rather manna sustaining us-- penetrating our spirits and testifying that the one who was in the manger is the true King of Kings and is coming again.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
   from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. ~ Is. 11:1

~~Maureen

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CHRISTmas Tot School: More Preparation

I've been printing, cutting, laminating and organizing toddler and preschool CHRISTmas activities to start next week. I thought I'd share some of my prep. work just in case you'd like to get some of these activities ready too.

I laminated these print-outs from Confessions of a Homeschooler with my Xyron 900. I have found that dry-erase crayons work great with the Xyron lamination (dry erase and wet erase markers tend to bead up the first couple times.)

Cut and laminated the star sequence activity found on my blog.

I printed out this cute counting activity from Musings of Me. I made it into a magnet activity with my Xyron 900. The number magnets I picked up at the Dollar Store.

These were a couple of things I picked up at Hobby Lobby and the Dollar Tree. The ice-cube tray, bells and mini-gifts will be used for sorting, patterning and counting. The nativity foam stamps will be used for patterning and crafting, and the nativity die-cut ornaments will be colored and added to our tree.

Then I found some of our Christmas books (I don't know why they were left out this year--I usually pack them up).  Here are my top 10 favorite Christian Christmas books (in no particular order):

1. My Birthday, Jesus' Birthday by Holly Davis (ours went AWOL--if you find it send it back--lol)
2. God's Christmas Gift by Nell Navillus
3. A Christmas Prayer by Amy Parker
4. Christmas in the Manger by Nola Buck
5. God Gave Us Christmas by Lisa T. Bergren
6. Humphrey's First Christmas by Carol Heyer 
7. The Pine Tree Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs
8. The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado
9. The Legend of the Three Trees
10. The Story of Christmas by Patricia Pingry

Related Posts: CHRISTmas Toddler Nativity Box

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