The third reason (reason one and two were in previous posts) I’m excited it’s Christmas is because this year we have decided to split up the Christmas story into 25 days. These bite sized pieces are perfect for our three year old, and even our two year old is picking up some of what we are teaching them. Each day we have a short Bible reading or story and we do an activity related to it. We also have a number of simple Christmas songs (some of them Bible verse’s) to add to the fun.
We started on the 1st December by introducing this:
We take one loop off each day and on the inside is written what the Bible story and activity are for that day. Ewan loves it, especially now the chain is getting shorter and he knows Christmas is coming sooner. In fairness, it’s not the most classy Christmas decoration, but it serves it’s purpose well.
We also introduced them to this:
My sister-in-law Naomi got me a beautiful nativity set from Africa about 8 years ago. I love it, and last year Ewan desperately wanted to play with it. Knowing it wouldn’t last too long in the hands of our exuberant two year old, it had to be strictly off limits. How sad. So this year I wanted to find something they could play with, and they have played with it a lot. I love to listen to Ewan act out the Christmas story, often with his own twists! “Joseph, I’m Mary, I’m having God’s baby, will you marry me” is one of my favourite quotes. We got the pictures for the nativity scene from this site for free.
Here are some of the crafts I’ve enjoyed doing with the kids so far.
Most of the ideas for the things we are doing are from this great site. We just changed it around a little to suit us.
This is probably the reason I’m enjoying the run up to Christmas the most. I love watching the kids take on new information and the structure of it means that I don’t put off doing the crafts and activities with the kids. All round I’ve found it to be lots of fun – purposeful interaction with my kids, my hubby and the Bible – I love it.
Impressed, you couldn’t do better for your kids
By: Alex & Florence on December 15, 2009
at 23:01
[...] Reason’s two and three can be found here and here. [...]
By: I can’t help it – I’m so excited! Reason One « Mark and Louise's Family Blog on December 17, 2009
at 05:25
[...] Reason three can be found here. [...]
By: I can’t help it – I’m so excited! Reason Two « Mark and Louise's Family Blog on December 17, 2009
at 05:26
[...] follow the bible story and also have some great times as a family. Louise has talked about them here. This valentines day Louise again organized some things for us as a family and she has talked about [...]
By: My Valentines Week « Mark and Louise's Family Blog on February 24, 2010
at 01:07
[...] For the past two years at Christmas we’ve done a “Christmas countdown” with the kids. Each day in December we read a small portion of the Christmas story together and then did some sort of craft/activity that went along with it. You can see some of the activities that we have done in the past with links here. [...]
By: Trying to keep Christ the center for our kids this Christmas « Mark and Louise's Family Blog on November 27, 2011
at 01:17