2011 Advent Activities

I am so excited for this year's Advent season.  We are going to try a few new things this year.  The last two years have been very fun so I am incorporating the best activities from those years with the activities in a new advent activity book, a new advent storybook, and instead of stockings we will be using an Advent spiral to track what we are doing each day.

The Activities
We will use The Christmas Countdown book.  Some of the activities the book suggests won't fit the ages and/or schedule for our family so we will replace those days with some of our favorite things from last two years such as making our gingerbread house, buying a chicken through World Vision, and others.  What I like about this book is there is a section for the adults to read and reflect on, along with the activity you complete as a family,




The Story
We will also be using a new Advent storybook this year, Jotham's Journey.  This is a book that the pastor at my Mom's church recommended and I am really looking forward to reading each night!





The Countdown
Previous years we have used stockings to track what we do each day, but this year we will use an advent spiral.  I will be using these picture holders to travel along each day's hole.  The picture holder will hold an index card with each day's activity in that we will replace with a candle once we have done the activity.

Our Advent Spiral.  All ready to get started on December 1!

We will start this on December 1st, because the spiral has 24 holes in it.  I am looking forward to adding to the spiral in the coming years with the other characters from the Ostheimer nativity collection, first on my wish list is Mary on the Donkey and Joseph so they can walk with our candles.  

Here is what we did in 2010 and 2009.  What does your family do to celebrate and prepare your hearts for Christmas?