Children of The Church: November 2014

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Advent Feast Days and Saints

Today is the day! The day that Advent begins, the time that we prepare our hearts to the birth of Jesus. As much as we like to do activities during Advent to help in our preparation and learning about Jesus we also love to celebrate the Saints! We enjoy celebrating the feast days of the saints throughout the year in our home and some of our favorite Saints happen to have feast days during Advent! Here are a few that we celebrate:

1. St Andrew: Advent kicks off with the feast day of St Andrew today on November 30th. Our plan is to get out our Advent activities, open our first of our daily Advent books with the children, say the blessing over our Advent Wreath, start our St Andrew's novena and have a fish dinner (because St Andrew was a fisherman!)

One thing that we are doing new this year in our home is having an Advent tree. This tree has ornaments that are purple, pink and silver (like the colors of the Advent wreath candles) and where we will hang our Jesse Tree Ornaments.

Putting up our Advent tree this weekend

2. St Nicholas: St. Nicholas's feast day on December 6th is our kids favorite! After a few years of having kids my husband and I decided that we were not going to celebrate Santa Claus at Christmas and instead just focus on the feast of St Nicholas. (We still do presents on Christmas Day but focus them as Jesus's birthday presents and the 3 gifts from the Magi). For the Feast of St Nicholas they write letters to the Christ Child and set them out with their shoes on the night of December 5th. We then get each of the children little gifts from St Nicholas (chocolate gold coins, clementines, candy canes, and a small book or activity). There are a lot of awesome ideas at the St Nicholas Center with fun activities to do and a lot of history about St Nicholas.

Our kids also LOVE the Veggietales movie St Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving. They still go around the house singing "Greece is the town of Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas..." This year our homeschool co-op is also having a party on St Nicholas's feast day with a special appearance from St Nicholas himself! We love celebrating St Nicholas early in Advent, and then shifting the focus to Jesus's birth at Christmas!

A sweet photo of our youngest son last year on St Nicholas's feast day with our parish priest who dressed as St Nicholas!

3. Immaculate Conception: On December 8th we celebrate the Immaculate Conception which is when the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived in her mother's womb (St Anne) free from original sin. This day we go to mass (since it is a holy day of Obligation) and are going to try to eat things white (representing purity of sin)! We also like this coloring sheet that helps show what we are celebrating in an easy way for kids to understand!

From CatholicIcing.com

4. St Juan Diego: Do you remember when I talked about how our children love our Saint Mail Subscription? Well the December saint this year is St Juan Diego, who's feast day is December 9th! We have never celebrated his feast day before, but we are excited to add some of their fun activities to the day and will make Mexican food for dinner to help with our celebration! A few things that Saint Mail suggests doing is bundling up and taking a 1 mi walk and to talk about how St Juan Diego used to walk 15 mi each way to mass and how he must have felt, and also making some tissue paper flowers! If you are still looking for a great Christmas present for your children/grandchildren, etc Saint Mail would be a wonderful gift!

Our First Delivery from Saint Mail!

5. Our Lady of Guadalupe: We celebrate the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th. This is the day that we use as a tribute to Jesus's mother Mary, and is usually most celebrated by Americans of Mexican heritage as Mary is Mexico's patron saint. In 1531 Our Lady of Guadalupe was said to appear to St Juan Diego as he was walking to mass and she asked Juan to tell the bishop to build a church at the site where he was. She then told Juan to go to the hill where they first met and Juan found flowers in the frozen ground. He gathered them in his cloak and brought them to the bishop. When Juan opened his cloak for the bishop the flowers that fell to the ground were roses that were not even grown in Mexico and also an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on his cloak!

Often these two feast days are celebrated together as the stories of these two saints are together and as their feast days occur in the same week! We will take time to say a decade of the rosary and continue in some Mexican food fun!

Our Candle and Book about Our Lady of Guadalupe

6. St Lucy: St Lucy's feast day is on December 13th and we have started the tradition that we drive around and look at Christmas lights as a family this day since St Lucy is the saint of light! It's so much fun to get a thermos of hot cocoa, get the kids in pajamas, put on some Advent Music and have special time as a family! Also, we now have her special peg doll that we painted from our swap this year, and one of our new Advent books this year is Lucia: Saint of Light, so we will also read that book to learn more about her history.

Celebrating St Lucy's feast day last year

7. Pope Francis's Birthday: Although not a feast day, Pope Francis's birthday is on December 17th, and this is a great day to talk about the role of the Pope in our Church with our children and also pray for Pope Francis! One of the books we are reading this year is Max and Benedict: A Bird's Eye View of the Pope's Daily Life. Although this book is about Pope Benedict it is a great story and example of the Pope's daily life! We might also make a cake to help celebrate (because we can always use another excuse for a cake!) Below is a puppet craft from CatholicIcing.com that we did last year on Pope Francis's birthday!

Also just released from Catholic Icing is this adorable Advent Saints Ornament Craft that includes ALL of these saints! We just bought it and I am so excited to add it to our celebrations this Advent!

Advent Ornaments from Catholic Icing

These are a few of our extra celebrations during Advent that we love. We also get to celebrate our middle son's baptism anniversary during Advent on December 11th! The kids love being able to celebrate on their birthdays, baptism anniversaries and name Saint feast days!

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Our Advent Activities-Drawing Closer to Christ

One of the fun things about being a parent is creating traditions within our own "domestic church". When we sat down and brainstormed about Advent and Christmas season in our home, so many things came to our mind as bringing our family closer to Christ. Here are a few of the things we include in our home during Advent:

1. St Andrew's Christmas Novena: There are a handful of novenas that I love during the liturgical year, but I think this one is my favorite. My husband and I did this novena together last year and we both fully believe that our intention was answered. Prayer is so powerful and it is such a wonderful act to come together, especially during Advent in prayer.

The prayer is: Hail and Blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of his Blessed Mother. Amen.

You recite the prayer 15 times a day from St Andrew's feast day on November 30th - Christmas Eve on December 24th. I have a beautiful chaplet that I got with a St Andrew medal and then made little chaplets for the boys with pipe cleaners and clear beads.

Blogger Carrots of Michaelmas has a beautiful printable that you can use this year with the prayer!

My St Andrew's Chaplet from Loreto Gift Shop

2. Jesse Tree: We have loved adding the Jesse Tree to our Advent Celebrations to help learn Salvation history. We have this Jesse Tree Book, which I really enjoy because it has devotions for both children and adults for each day. We also use the DVD from Holy Heros for the kids to watch every day which has adorable short videos explaining the Bible Story for the Day. They LOVE these videos and will ask to re-watch certain favorites throughout the season. We started homeschooling, and now use the Jesse Tree as a part of our lessons during Advent time. Last year after Christmas I purchased new wooden Jesse Tree Ornaments from JesseTreeOrnaments on Etsy and I am SO excited to start using them this year!

3. Advent Wreath: As Lisa Hendey writes in her book that we use called "O Radiant Dawn": "The wreath's simple circle of evergreens represents the never-ending promise of eternal life. Upon the wreath or in its middle we arrange four candles - three purple and one rose. The purple candles mark the solemn tone of the season and call us to wait patiently, eyes set on Christ. The rose candle marks our great joy as Christmas approaches".

We usually light the Advent candle and read the reflections before dinner during Advent. This helps bring us together as a family each day and the children love the candles. We also have a children's advent wreath that the children all enjoy using during Advent.

4. A Straw Bed for Jesus: This was one of our children's favorite Advent activities last year. We read the book The Last Straw, which talks about doing good deeds for others during Advent and with each good deed you earn a piece of straw to put in the manger. You try to make the manger as soft as possible while preparing for Jesus's birthday. Then on Christmas we had a doll that we laid in the soft manger from all of the children's wonderful deeds. We also are adding this book, The Last Straw, this year as one of the 24 books that they will open each day of Advent.

5. Advent Calendar: The Children love following along with the Advent Calendar and our Advent Storybook. We read the Advent Storybook at bedtime each night during Advent and it is a sweet little story about Benjamin Bear who is learning about small miracles, acts of kindness and stories about Jesus as Christmas comes near. We also for the first time this year are wrapping 24 books to have the children open one each day of Advent to read during our afternoon story time (watch for that list coming soon!)

Our Advent Books ready to be wrapped!

16. Nativity: We have the Willow Tree Nativity set, that I had received as a Christmas and birthday present from my parents a few years ago that we all love! I do need to set it up high so that little hands don't break it (usually we set it on our piano). What we like to do during Advent is add more to the Crèche each week as Advent continues. I also have this pregnant mother figurine from Willow Tree that we use as Mary in our scene leading up to Christmas. Our children especially love to see pregnant Mary journeying to Bethlehem and then on Christmas morning waking up to see that baby Jesus has now been born (and we switch to the Mary included in the nativity set!)

We also have a handful of Children's Nativity sets so that they can interact and carry the pieces around. Each of the boys are getting their own new little nativity sets for St Nick's Feast Celebration this year!

Pregnant Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem

Early Christmas morning with Mary and Baby Jesus

7: O Antiphons: I love continuing to add prayer as Christmas approaches and try to slow down the external activities. We pray O Antiphons from December 17th - 23rd. I got these amazing O Antiphon wooden ornaments from JesseTreeTreasures on Etsy and they are such a beautiful way to help build anticipation of the Christ child coming. We use the prayer companion from Family in Feast and Feria that I really enjoy. We usually listen to the song O Come O Come Emmanuel, and one of the goals I have for this year is for our older children to learn a verse of the song!

Those are the main family activities that we include during Advent. While this might look like a lot, most of these activities simply replace things that we are doing at our home during the rest of the liturgical year. We very lightly do our regular homeschool lessons during Advent, so the Jesse Tree activities and videos replace that time. Earning straw for good deeds replaces our Behavior Chart that occurs throughout the day and our Advent Storybook replaces our regular bedtime story books. My husband and I did St Andrew's novena by ourselves during our couples prayer time last year, but hopefully will be able to add the children when time allows. Even with these activities we definitely use Advent as a time to light the fire, cuddle up and slow down!

I will continue to share some fun Advent activities including how we celebrate Saint Feast days during Advent and how we incorporate Advent to our homeschooling! Stay tuned!

***Also, if you are looking for a WONDERFUL way to organize your Advent and Christmas this planner from Catholic Icing is perfect! I got it last year and absolutely loved it. I was able to meet Lacy this past summer when we went to the MN Homeschool Conference and she is just as wonderful in person as on her blog!

Our Advent/Christmas Book List

For the first time this year we are going to wrap a different book for each day of Advent for the children to open and read during our afternoon story time. We are so excited to start this tradition and help add some quality cuddle time reading, anticipation each day, fun stories and learning to Advent! Most of the books are books that we already had, but we did get some fun new ones this year! Also, some books are chose for particular days (especially on feast days of St Nicholas, St Lucy, Pope Francis's birthday, etc) and some are just random for Advent and Christmas fun!

Do you have any favorite Advent and Christmas books? I would love to continue finding new great books to add to our list! Here is our collection for this year!

All Ready to be Wrapped! We will put this wooden box under our Christmas tree!

1. Advent Storybook, The Last Straw, and The Advent Jesse Tree: On the first day of Advent each of our three children will open a book and these are books that we will use daily throughout Advent with different activities