Epiphany

 Happy Epiphany yesterday!

We had a fun day celebrating the wisemen's visit to Jesus.

I had a glass star candle on the table at breakfast for each kiddo.  A little surprise!  My kids are loving candles, so they were thrilled to have one for their very own and to keep it at their place all week while they eat!  I got these for a dollar at a thrift store. 

 These wisemen were waiting in the middle of the table.  Facing west (since they were coming from the east) but Q rearranged them, as you can probably tell. 

 Daddy built Jesus' family a house!  So we moved em out of the stable and into a little house.  We spent a lot of time talking about the fact that they lived in a simple house--not a castle or mansion, as most people expected the newborn king to live.  We put a little wooden crate in place of a manger so Jesus could have a bed.  We made a path for the camels/wisemen with rocks and acorns and candles.  Q had lots of fun getting things set up "just so!"  I love using godly play to teach spiritual concepts and Bible stories to my kiddos.  This will all be available for them to play with for a couple weeks, as they work through the story during play. 

 I made a star garland that led to Jesus' house.  I traced a little star cookie-cutter on to some cardboard from the recycle bin.  Cut them out.  Quinn and I painted some of them gold.  Then I sewed them (with my machine) onto a piece of jute.  I strung them from the ceiling down to the house. 

 We read the story SMALL CAMEL FOLLOWS THE STAR (Rachel W.N. Brown), which Quinn loved.  It was a little lengthy for Beck, so he squirmed through it.  Later in the day I got out some of our Christmas board books (that talked about Jesus' birth) and we looked at the pages with the wisemen.  He loved this! 

Q and I have been reading in her Bible about how kings were anointed as a sign of them being chosen by God.  So we anointed our "Baby Jesus"--Aka--the King of Kings!  I melted a little coconut oil and put a few drops of lavender oil in it.  Quinn LOVED this activity! 

 Beck was interested for about 2 minutes.  :)

 We read the story from the gospel of Matthew.  We talked a lot about how kings usually live and look, and why people were surprised by Jesus' humble beginnings.  We talked about the gifts--and how we can give Jesus the gift of our love and the gift of following him with our life and our actions. 

 We made "wiseman" hats--I cut out the back from old jeans.  The kids picked fabric from my scrap bin and I  pieced it together then sewed over it all.  I love how they turned out! 

 Here they are yelling "wisemen!" at eachother.  This is so my kids.  :)

 

We had a special dinner--roast (Daddy's favorite) with sugared apples--I used to make these by putting apples and red hots in the crockpot, but Quinn can't have food dye, so yesterday I used cranberries (sauce--cooked and left over from New Years, a touch of brown sugar and cinnamon, and the apples.  It was soooo yummy!  And a beautiful red color.  

I had set the table with paper stars I'd cut out of brown paper for each person's placemat, and then the stars in the center.  We ate on pretty dishes.  Quinn told the story of the wisemen's visit.  

We also had lots of "camel" pretend play.  We have a stuffed camel they played with, and we also pretend our rocking horse and some other large stuffed animals were camels.  

I look forward to the tradition of celebrating Epiphany and adding a little bit to what we do each year! 

Building a manger

At the beginning of the advent season Matt and the kids built a manger together. 
Matt had pre-cut the wood (a pallet he'd deconstructed--we build everything out of trashed pallets around here!) and all the kids had to do was help him nail it together.  They even got to use his air nailer, which was amazing to them.  :)  Usually he opts for old fashioned hammers and nails (often he will drill the hole for the nail first, then have them pound the nail in to make it easier), but this time they wanted to hear the air compressor. 

I had already given Daddy instructions that I wanted to use it as a bookshelf after Christmas (I'd seen one similar in a Land of Nod catelog), so he made one side higher so books could rest spine out. 

The manger sat under our tree, empty until Christmas.  Beck wanted his baby, Moe, to be Jesus.  We wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger as we talked about the story.  Now the manger and "Baby Jesus" stay out in our living room for the kids to play with.  Quinn likes to swaddle him and Beck just likes to carry him around. 

I just love those little tootsies on the edge of this frame, don't you?!

We have talked this advent season about the prophets sharing God's promise of a King he would send.  We've talked about the story of David and how Samuel annointed his head with oil to show he was a king.  So on Monday (Ephiphany) we will annoint our baby Jesus' head with some olive and lavendar oil and talk about how Jesus is the King of Kings.  The kids are already excited!
Again, using the language and photos from the Jesus Storybook Bible as we go through this season--there's a great story/illustrations of Samuel annointing David, but then the book connects that story through to Jesus.  So much fun!

Next year we may use our manger to add a piece of straw anytime we do acts of kindness--the message being that we can prepare our hearts to be a home for Jesus when we do things that he did--love others as ourselves. 

Advent Devotionals with Preschoolers

One of my favorite yearly re-reads about advent is
http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/Advent/preparing-children.html
(that's a link to their article on preparing children for Advent)

Here's some of what they say about language to use with children regarding Advent (from the article):
The Message
We can tell our children about Isaiah, the prophet.  We can tell them that God has wanted to be the one who would lead and take care of his people.   But they rebelled against God, and demanded kings, just like all the peoples around them had.  So, God let them have kings.  As it turned out, there was one bad king after another.  And God sent prophets to the people and the kings to remind them of the agreement - the "covenant" - God made with them:  I'll be your God and you be my people. 

Now the way the people made someone a king was to pour a bit of oil on their head.  The one who was "anointed" this way with oil became the king.  Well, the prophets began to tell the people that God would send them "an anointed one" (the word they use to say "anointed one" in Hebrew is "Messiah.")  In fact, they said that this Messiah would be called "Emmanuel", which in Hebrew means, "God is with us." 

So, the message of the prophets was about a promise - that God would save his people from all that they were suffering.  The prophets use such wonderful images to tell the people that they could expect and hope for a day when "every tear would be wiped away."  It would be a day of great peace - "the lion would lie down with the lamb" and the people will beat their spears into hooks to prune trees with.  And, the most unbelievable promise of all:  "death will be no more."

We all know now that what God was preparing his people for was the coming of Jesus, the Christ (Christos in Greek means "the anointed one.") 

Then, of course, we can tell them about Zachary and Elizabeth and about Joseph and Mary.  We can tell them the story from Luke's gospel first.  What is so surprising about the story is that he comes, not like a king, but in great simplicity and poverty.  Our God is truly with us, as a little baby.  He knows what is like to be a child - everything.

We can tell this story to our children in so many ways.  We can let them tell us what it means to them. Through all this conversation, the message will come through.  During these weeks of Advent, we want to look forward to celebrating his coming to live our life and to set us free - free from our sins and free from death itself.

We want to open up Advent for them, so that they can get ready for - look forward to - Christmas in a different way.  We want to introduce them to faith-filled meanings for light/darkness, hunger/thirsts, and all the other images of Isaiah.  We want them to really know the meaning of "the Christmas story."

After I read this section I knew immediately that I would want to pick out some sections from our Jesus Storybook Bible  to read.


Those are the sections that we read during the nights leading up to Advent.  I used some of the language from the Creightononline article and then what we gleaned from the storybook Bible, and I love how simply, clearly and beautifully the message of Advent was presented.  Perfect level of understanding for preschoolers/young elementary age kiddos--and Mamas, too!

A snack she can do herself.

Monday is popcorn for snack.  Q is so very proud to handle it all herself.  She scoops 2 scoops of popcorn (just regular old popcorn) into a brown paper sack, folds down the top and puts it into the microwave on the "popcorn" setting.  She knows to be careful when removing it cause it's gonna be hot!  She pours it into three bowls for me and Beck and her, and she cleans up after herself!  It's a great task that requires several steps for her to keep track of, fine motor coordination in the careful scooping and "measurement," and it's highly self-motivating because the girl loves to eat the popcorn!
 

 

Idea Organization

For some reason New Years is always correlated in my mind with organization and it's a fitting time for me to start afresh with some of my organizational strategies.  I wanted to share an educational organization tool that works really well for me.  Low tech, but that's how I like it. 

I don't use pinterest.  It's way too distracting for me.  Anytime I have gotten on there just to do a search I end up chasing rabbits all over the place and have two hundred other ideas I want to try and didn't finish out the one I was initially searching for. 

So here's what I do:

On my computer I have folders saved.  One for each month of the year.  When I see an idea I want to try, a book I want to read my kids, or something I want to cook that is festive, I save it to the corresponding month.  At the beginning of every month I look through my files and see what works for my kids at these particular ages.  I put any books I want on reserve at the library and make a little picture list (copy and paste small versions of the photos) onto a Word document to use for my planning. 

Here's a screen shot of my folders:

And here's the inside of January's folder:

I get the ideas from blogs I read, educational forums, email newsletters, etc. 

I also have other folders called "Playroom ideas, Books to read the kids, Quinn Learning Ideas, Beck Learning Ideas, etc."

So right now it's great because when I see pictures of things people did this season to celebrate Advent/Christmas/Ephiphany, etc., and I like them, I can save them to my December folder and have a whole new wealth of ideas for next year!

Works for me.... 

Advent Nature Walk

We have a tradition of starting off our Advent season with a family nature walk to gather some pine branches to make our Advent Wreath.  Sunday we headed off to the woods with the little people and dog and cat to enjoy some of God's creation and to clip a bag full of pine. 

My yoga pants have a yellow band at the top, that isn't my bootie, by the way.  :)

 

 

It's a great way to spend time together, slow down a little bit, detach for any electronics (except our old point and shoot camera for documentation!) and get ready for the Advent Season. 

It's Advent!

Advent started yesterday, and we are excited to head into this beautiful season.  I am always a little apprehensive of "doing it right" and of course one of my strongest prayers right now is to get over that and let the Spirit guide our family as we prepare to celebrate the coming (s) of Jesus.

I will post these in more detail once I catch my breath (we got home from a 10 day cross-country, multi-stop roadtrip early yesterday morning, just in time for the dog to get skunked in the backyard...).  However, we took a walk yesterday to gather pine for our advent wreath, the kids and I unwrapped our advent candles for the year (a gift from Mimi), and read a great book that sums up the story of Christmas.  I put our advent wreath together and got it set up on the table.  I started an Advent devotional for myself that I plan to follow through the season.  I have instituted a month of "super easy dinners" so that I can use the kids' resttime for my study time instead of dinner prep.  I also re-read all of my past blog posts on here that pertain to Advent.  So powerful to re-read those reminders of the reason for Advent, and to remember where I was last year as I entered this season.  Many things the same, and a few are different.  If you want to read them (there are some GREAT quotes), you can click on the "advent" label on my sidebar. 

Also, I am really loving this article:
Preparing Children for Advent (click)

I printed it out and am getting ready to sit down with my highlighter and pen to note things I want to use with my kiddos.  I already have a devotional time planned for Quinn to use her Jesus Storybook Bible to go through some of the messages that lend understanding to this season of Advent.  Don't worry, I will post once I get it fleshed out a bit more! 

Also I purchased this e-book:
FEAST Real Food, Reflections, and Simple Living for the Christian Year

I read through it on our roadtrip and just LOVE it.  It begins with Advent and carries on through the whole church year.  I'd strongly recommend it!