We make an Advent wreath from some branches the girls gather from our tree in the backyard. We start with one candle in the center of our wreath and add another at the beginning of each new week. The fifth and final candle is added Christmas morning.
We realize they do sell Advent candles, traditional tapered candles in the proper colors. We did that the first year, but those candles are so wobbly and tipsy they make me nervous. Now we use sturdy pillar and jar filled candles. They are just so much more practical with little ones. :)
It works best with our schedule to do Advent at lunch time. We light the candles during our meal and then as the girls are finishing up Seth reads our Advent devotion.
This year we are reading Bartholomew's Passage by Arnold Ytreeide. This is our second year reading through his series of Advent books. We all really enjoy them.
After our reading we choose a Christmas song to sing. Hark! the Herald Angels Sing, God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen, and O Come, O Come, Emmanuel are a few of our favorites.-
Next comes the girls' favorite part- snuffing out the candle! After candle snuffing one girl pulls the Hershey kiss from our Advent calendar and passes out kisses to everyone. Then last of all we cut a link from the Advent chain moving us one day closer to Christmas. Each girl gets to do one thing, snuff, pass out candy or cut the chain, and we rotate each day so they each get a turn doing everything.
The girls are always so excited to see the nativity come out each year. We like to set it up low enough so all the girls can reach it. They can play with the pieces but they are not allowed to leave the area of the nativity. The baby Jesus is put away until Christmas morning when the girls will wake up to find Him finally there in the manger. The Wise Men too, make their appearance after Christmas when we celebrate the Day of the Kings in January.
Very cute! Daniel loves our nativity, but I have him just say hi to the people. His favorite is the sheep which he says "dog. dog." to over and over. :)
ReplyDeleteAll such good things. We have advent things we do, but with Oystein's traveling, he misses out on the book.
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