Friday, December 2, 2011

Christmas countdown

This year I decided to try an advent calendar for the kids.  
However, we don't celebrate santa and we don't pretend about santa. 
Christmas for us is about Christ's birth.  That is what we celebrate.  
I'm one of those mom's who does not like to give my kids candy or small toys.  So I was at a bit of a loss, I posted a plea on facebook.  My friends came thru and gave me great suggestions.
I decided to make the advent calendar easy and easily doable.  These had to be things that I could do with the kids that didn't cost to much money and did not focus on 'getting'
I made two paperchains,
 my kids, I knew would not share

My kids can't read yet, so to make it even easier for me, I just wrote the date in each chain-link.
Then I printed out my advent list and posted it between the chains

 December 1, 
each kid cut their chain-link and our special countdown task today...
cut out snowflakes and start to memorize a bible verse for the Christmas season.
I used coffee filters so that it would be easier for my little ones to cut. 
The kids still are not super fantastic with scissors, so I ended up doing most of the cutting,
letting the kids unfold them.  They thought that was just as great.




2 comments:

  1. What a great idea Tara! You've found a fun and easy way to teach your kids about Christmas. The snowflakes turned out great. :) While I do buy my kids a few presents, we mainly concentrate on the the true meaning of Christmas too, which is Jesus birth. Looking forward to seeing what else you come up with for the calendar.

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  2. Coffee liners! Brilliant! How did you do the one second from the left in the bottom picture? So fancy!

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