Our First Week of Advent - 2015

 

I love Advent and taking this time with my family to slow down from our usual homeschooling activities to curl up on the couch, read some books and learn about Jesus!  We have had a great week and look forward to more as we journey towards Christmas.

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New Traditions

We have a few new traditions that we have added this year.  We have done the activity before of putting a piece of straw in the manger with every act of kindness to make a soft bed for baby Jesus, but this year we got this special new box to put our hay in.  It is a beautiful wooden box with the nativity and "For unto us a child is born" engraved on top.  On the side our family name is also engraved to make this extra special for our family.

 

The Christmas Star from Afar is the second new tradition and it is a beautiful story and wooden nativity set.  As Christmas nears the star is moved throughout the home and the children use the wise men to "follow the star" with a little game of hide and seek each day.  On Christmas morning the star is placed above the manger with baby Jesus!  This has been a fun activity to remind us all about the true meaning of Christmas.

 

 

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St. Andrew's Feast Day and Novena

 

The St. Andrew's novena or Christmas Novena is my favorite novena of the entire liturgical year.  I love how it helps to focus my attention on the nativity during Advent as we pray this novena from St. Andrew's feast day on November 30th through Christmas Eve.  Also, I have truly seen our family's intentions come true from this novena which makes it even more special to us.  My husband and I try to pray the novena together every night (saying the prayer 15 times each day) and we are also teaching our children the prayer to say once with night time prayers as well.

 

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The Christmas Miracle of Jonathon Toomey

We started reading our books from Christmas and Catholic Mosaic and started with one that I think may become a new family favorite, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.  This beautiful story is of a old gentleman who had lost his wife and daughter and had become somewhat of a "scrooge" in the town.  Through following a wish of a widow Mr. Toomey was asked to carve a wooden Christmas Creche and it truly transformed him and his view of Christmas. 

After reading this story we gave the children a beautiful nativity made of carved wood, just like in the story.  This will be a special set for them to play with and experience the story of Christmas.  We also took the time after reading this story to set up our other family nativity sets.  We set them up in stages throughout Advent and Christmas so right now it is just the shepherds and animals in the barn and a pregnant Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem!

 

 

 

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The Cobweb Curtain

The next book that we studied this week was also a new book to our family called The Cobweb Curtain.  We loved this story of how a shepherd helped Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus escape from King Herod and while they were trying to get away they hid in a cave.  To protect the Holy Family from being found a spider who lived in the cave made a beautiful cobweb across the entrance of the cave which made the guards think no one could have entered the cave for weeks.  Once fear of being caught had passed the Holy Family continued on their journey and the shepherd kept the beautiful cobweb curtain that protected the Holy Family and hung it over his tree.  The shepherd's family continued in following years to decorate their tree with tinsel or a "cobweb" to remind them of this beautiful story.

 

In having fun exploring this story we use the recipe in Christmas Mosaic to make chocolate and butterscotch Spider cookies.  This was a new treat for our family and we had a lot of fun making them and even more fun eating them!

 

 

 

The craft suggested in Christmas Mosaic was to make spider webs with glue and glitter, but we decided it would be even more fun to put an image of the Holy Family behind the spider web.  This helped us remember how the spider protected the Holy Family in the cave! 

 

Finally, we decorated our Christmas tree this day as well while listening to Rain for Roots Waiting Songs, which are all beautiful Advent songs!  It was a fun day!

 

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Advent Wreath, Advent Tree and Jesse Tree

 

We love our traditions that we have started during Advent.  Each night at the dinner table we light the Advent wreath together and listen to Advent music and O Come, O Come Emmanuel.  The first night of Advent my husband led us in a beautiful prayer for the Advent wreath and then we have continued reflections each night using the resource of Welcome Baby Jesus.  It is a perfect resources for homes with little children as it puts the words, prayers and actions into concepts that little ones can understand and appreciate!

 

We started doing a Jesse Tree a few years ago, but I think this is probably the first year that our children are really understanding it and starting to appreciate it.  We use the beautiful ornaments from Jesse Tree Treasures, read the Bible Verses that correlate with each day and watch the daily video from Holy Heroes. 

We also started the tradition of having an Advent tree.  It is a small tree that we have in the front room in our home, which we decorate with the colors of Advent (purple, pink and silver).  It is a perfect little reminder to us about what the season is really about.

 

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The Legend of the Poinsettia

 

We read the Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola another day this week and like all of his other books this was another wonderful story.  The message of this book of what makes a gift truly beautiful is such an important message during this season.  Also my husband had brought us home beautiful Poinsettias this week and the children thought it was simply magical that we had the same "flowers" as from the miracle in the story!

 

 

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Preparing for St. Nicholas's Feast Day

The feast of St. Nicholas is a BIG deal in our house!  My husband and I both grew up believing and celebrating Santa Clause on Christmas morning and loved it.  Yet, when we started celebrating Saint feast days, Advent, and Christmas as a young family we decided that we want to put emphasis on the real St. Nicholas on his feast day (December 6th) and keep Christmas for Christ!  Our children know that St. Nicholas was a real person, and that he gave gifts to the young girls as dowries, and that is how we started the tradition as Santa Clause.  Our kids will exchange the stories around sometimes taking about how St. Nicholas lived in Myra, Greece and then moved to the North Pole, and for now we kind of let them create their own explanations.  If they ask us questions we commonly reply with "What do you think?" 

Our oldest son is very rational and methodological and already explained to me that there is no way that St. Nicholas can visit everyone in one night so "that is why he visits the Catholics on December 6th!"  The closest opinion that I have read to how we treat the St. Nicholas vs. Santa "debate" is written by Bonnie over at A Knotted Life (so I don't have to write out a whole novel myself!!)

This feast day is also special to our family because a mere year ago on the feast of St. Nicholas is when we announced to our family that we were expecting another baby!  It was a day filled with such joy and so much fun for our whole family.  I think of our Samuel Nicholas every day, but will especially think of him with much love on the feast of St. Nicholas. 

To prepare for St. Nicholas's feast day this year we have been doing a lot of fun reading, watching movies (Veggie Tales St. Nicholas) and we have lots of other fun activities this weekend leading up to his feast day on Sunday planned (so stay tuned!)

Linking up with Like Mother Like Daughter, Californa to Korea and This Ain't the Lyceum this week!