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I love Christmas! I love the decorations and I love getting gifts for people. I love the traditions associated with it and now that I have kids, it is fun to carry down old traditions from my childhood and make new traditions that my kids will hopefully pass along.
I never had an Advent calendar growing up. After seeing such cute ideas across the inter-webs the past couple years, I decided to try one for myself. I wanted to follow some kind of reading plan about the Christmas story and I also wanted to put my creative juices to work and make a DIY calendar(despite the large selection everywhere).
After some research, I came across a reading plan using the Jesus Storybook Bible. I. LOVE. THIS. BOOK. My daughter got gifted this bible from her teacher at kindergarten graduation. I absolutely love the way it is written; so simple for kids to understand and yet it even touches me with how simply the love of God is spoken of. What’s great, is that this reading plan goes through the whole book. There are 24 chapters, perfect for advent. Each chapter is a story, and it’s not too long. It’s great because each story points to the coming of Jesus.
You can get the book here.
The printable advent guide is free and is a great resource. If you print double sided you can get the daily reading reference on one side and the corresponding picture on the other. I didn’t realize this until after I printed it all so I just glued the two corresponding pieces of paper together and then cut them up. I folded a piece of brown craft paper and put the reference and picture inside. I used sticky notes to write an advent activity that we would do together as a family for each day. This is anything from singing Christmas songs together to baking cookies for a neighbor and driving around to look at Christmas lights. The guide came with a sheet of numbers so I cut those out and glued them onto the top of the folded craft paper. We started with one, for the date of each day, but you could also start from 24 and do it as a countdown.
I kept it simple to hang it all up: twine strung from push pins and colorful clothespins I found at the Target dollar spot over the summer. (Finally got some use out of those!) Each day we pull out the inside piece of paper, read the story, and then flip it over to the picture and hang it back up.
Side note – the Jesus Storybook Bible is not just for advent. This is a great book to have because it is such an easy read with kids!
What are some Christmas traditions or different ways of doing the advent calendar that you love? I would love to hear your ideas!
Artfully, Beata
