Advent

We always try to make a holiday a bit more meaningful in our house by over-focusing on it. Daniel has a hard time grasping different holidays that happen only once so we have to talk about them a lot. Once he gets focused on the idea he is then ready to learn a bit more about it. Now that he is in school, I am pretty sure Santa will be covered. At least at Thanksgiving he really learned a lot about turkeys so I am sure they won't forget about Santa. So, of course, at home we will be focusing on the Nativity and Baby Jesus. Last year we started the tradition to read one religious children's book each week of advent. Daniel and Simon really like repetition so we read the same book for 7 days then add a book to the list and read both books for 7 more days etc. Daniel absolutely remembered the books from last year so he was very eager to start once we brought out the Advent wreath. We have been reading "Who is Coming to our House?". It is written from the perspective of the animals in the manger as they prepare for Mary and Joseph to arrive. Daniel absolutely adores it and Simon is really learning to like it too.

Another thing we are doing is an advent calender with activities and ideas of ways to focus on the true meaning of the holiday and prepare ourselves for Christmas. I could not really come up with something to do every single day and frankly, that is just too much pressure with young kids. Doing something once or twice a week in the evenings is enough for them. So I picked 3 topics and came up with 4 activities for each topic. So, 3 activities a week. Easy enough. Here are our topics and activities:

Giving: Buy a gift for an senior citizen (the Walmart in the area has ornaments on a tree in the front of the store with items a certain senior needs); Buy a gift for an Orphan (our church's youth group visits the same orphanage every year in Mexico and they bring them gifts right after Christmas); Buy a gift for our sponsored child (Kids Alive is the organization we sponsor though and they send a catalog every year of additional things you can buy for the kids); Make cookies and deliver to a lonely neighbor

Celebrating as a Family: Decorating the Christmas Tree; Making Christmas cookies together; Driving to see the lights in the different neighborhoods after church; Making gifts to give to family

Having Fun: I picked 4 different activities in New Orleans and we will try to do one per week (or one right after Christmas if needed)

One thing I have learned from last year is to try not pack too much into the kids schedules. I am all about family traditions, but when there is someone in the family who makes it a bit challenging you just have to do what they can handle. Daniel's attention span is about 2 minutes long for activities that do not involve animals or letters so I will probably give him 5 ornaments to hang and one cookie to decorate. Granted that is not what I had planned, but it is worth it to have an activity we are all enjoying instead of being forced to enjoy.

Oh, and one last thing to prepare us for Christmas. Daniel does not have much of an interest in opening gifts. This is not entirely bad unless you are the person giving him a gift and he just pushes it away. So a friend suggested that every day or two I wrap up a small gift with a piece of candy inside so he will learn that there are good things inside those bags and boxes. I tried this the first day with our new children's Nativity set I bought!
And as you can see from the picture he did enjoy opening it.


Although once we set it up the most important characters in the story were shortly missing from their display ; ) (He only plays with the animals and their "house")