Several years ago, Jon’s parents gave us a great Advent calendar. It looks like a little chest of drawers, but with swinging doors like a closet. We’ve tried several different ways to celebrate Advent using this over the years, but I think we’ve finally settled on a good one.
Instead of filling the cubbies with chocolates (yummy, but we have those in the house anyway) or little trinkets (fun, but ultimately more expensive than useful), we have stuffed each little closet with a slip of paper containing a fun activity to do with Lucy that day, running all through December until Christmas Day.
We hope this works well and helps us all experience the joy of waiting through Advent for the arrival of Jesus. Here’s what’s on the schedule. And hey — don’t show Lucy or you’ll spoil the surprises!
p{color:gray}. Photo: Here’s Lucy on Christmas Day a year ago, definitely still looking like a baby, at eight months old to the day. (See below for a current holiday portrait of the young lady.)
# extra reading time with Mama or Papa
# visit with Grandma & Grandpa (Happy birthday tomorrow, Grandma!)
# walk outside, then cocoa & cookies inside
# experiment with washable crayons
# watch lots of “Daily Lucy videos”:/news/category/baby/video/
# make a Christmas shaker
# play with trains with Deborah, Evan, Grandma, and Grandpa
# “Sankta Lucia pageant”:http://www.northpark.edu/news/story.cfm?ID=2450 at North Park University
# wear jingle bells and dance
# watch “_How the Grinch Stole Christmas_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000HA4WDY/octothorppres-20
# make and play with playdoh
# M&Ms for a snack
# put up Christmas lights in the play room (for “Sankta Lucia”:http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/lucia.htm Day)
# scarves in the Kleenex box
# decorate Christmas cookies with Grandma
# a family walk
# extra-long hand-washing (i.e., play in sink)
# watch “_A Charlie Brown Christmas_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004W5UM/octothorppres-20
# color hunt (look for several small objects of one color and put them in a bag)
# roll on cushions on the floor
# make a toddler train (string little boxes together to fill with stuff and let Lucy drag them around)
# experiment with (washable!) markers
# trim the Christmas tree
# sing Christmas carols
# Christmas!
Several of these ideas come from “_The Toddler’s Busy Book_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671317741/octothorppres-20 , such as the “toddler train,” “scarves in the Kleenex box,” and “color hunt.” Other activities are just fun or silly or, frankly, things we had planned already. We hope this Advent tradition helps us to enjoy lots of joyful family time together. Come, Lord Jesus!
p{color:gray}. Photo: Here’s Lucy all dressed up for brunch on Thanksgiving Day 2007 with the Gortner family. So big!
wow, Lucy looks so grown up! Can’t believe it!
yes! I did this one year when my oldest was about 3, and had many of the same ideas! Haven’t had the energy to do it again but want to – maybe next year. Some other things we did:
-catch snowflakes on our tongues (a slip of paper that I snuck in the night before snow was predicted)
-make a snowman (snuck in night before a snowfall)
-visit so-and-so (family or friends)
-make cookie dough
-cut out and bake cookies
-decorate cookies (yes it took us three days; much easier with low expectations)
-make Christmas cards (same as ‘play with washable markers’!)
Oh, I like the “make Christmas cards” idea as a purpose for the marker play. Good ideas!
This is what we are doing with Madeline, as well. Today the card says “Wear something red” and she has been marching around saying “RED RED RED” all day!
What a fun idea!
I like the “wear something red” idea! Christmasy without extra work! Maybe I can do this again next year!
re: Christmas cards– I’ve gotten the coolest Christmas cards (and even sweatshirts, by having them draw on white inkjet T-shirt paper made for dark shirts!) from my two-to-five y-o kids by listening to them as they draw (sometimes I need to ask questions) and then writing in the narration, e.g. “Dis is a Cwismas hammuw, it go bang bang bang and it hams and hams all da nails” or “Dis is Mary and Jesus and da manger and a GWEAT BIG ‘TAR over da top”. The pictures are all just exuberant scribbles and dots, but sometimes they have these great stories inside them! I don’t know if Lucy’s vocal enough for that yet, but it’s sure a great excuse to slow down and really listen… and record it for posterity!
What a wonderful idea! I just bought two of the chocolate advents from the high school German club fundraiser, but as a child we always had really cool advent adventures.
I hope this year’s Christmas cards have Lucy on them. Mo absolutely loves to look at the photos of Lucy on our fridge!