Advent 2017

Evening readers!

Four years ago I had a great advent plan and I managed to blog about it every day. I have loved reading back over what we got up to then and thought that it'd be a good idea to do the same this year. Three years on we now have a 6 year daughter and 3 3/4 year old son, which is a completely different kettle of fish. One main difference is that Zoë-Grace is now in Year 1 and Caleb is at pre-school for 2 whole days, which leaves me with a lot less time to do various activities with them. But they are older and so their understanding is great, which is very exciting!

So, what do I have planned for this year...

With the children:

Advent Box - I love the idea of a Christmas Eve box, but it is our tradition to go to a Christmas Eve Carol Service (or Crib Service) which means there's not really any time for anything extra. So we started a new tradition of an Advent Box. This box contains all our Christmas DVDs and CDs, craft and activity books, nativity set, as well as new Christmas pyjamas, jumpers and hair bobbles/hats etc. This box requires pretty much no effort except for making sure that it all gets put away properly at the end of the Christmas season!

From Creation to Christmas (also known as a Jesse Tree) - At our evening meal we are reading a story from the Bible and hanging a felt ornament of that story on our 'tree'. The stories start with Creation and progress through the Bible always pointing at the reason for Jesus' birth. We have been developing this idea and making it our own, such as adding in the story of Joshua and Caleb to keep our own little Caleb happy. I do have loads of possible activities to do with the children relating to each story, but am expecting to not have as much time to do them as previous years. We'll see what happens! As I have said in a previous blog, I need to be "flexibly organised".

Wrapped Books - All our Christmas books have been wrapped up and we are opening one each day. I have pruned out some of the more babyish ones and introduced four new books which I am very excited about as I think they are books which will grow with us for many years.

Advent Adventure Tin (by Tinspired) - This is a new 'adventure' this year as I have no idea what it's going to be like! We have Tinspired's Date Night tin and have really enjoyed the ideas shared in there so we are looking forward to working through the creative ideas in the tin and hopefully finding some new adventures! (For more information go to https://www.facebook.com/tinspired/)

We have also been gifted with two lovely chocolate Real Advent Calendars with the Nativity story, so we will be using those in the morning (and sending the children off to school with chocolate fuel in their little bodies - mwa haha!!)

Myself:

For me the Advent season focuses on expectation and anticipation of Christ’s birth which is celebrated at Christmas. I know for friends in the Church of England it is much more and I'm hoping to explore a bit of their deeper knowledge of Advent this year.

We are obviously doing quite a bit as a family so I don't want to add much to my schedule, I have a few ideas but not settled on anything yet. Hopefully I'll decide soon!