Thursday, July 16, 2009

I'm beginning to think a lot about.............

............Christmas. Last year in December I started this blog to keep some of the things we are doing at home separate from the things I document in my school blog. Many of my first posts on this blog were about Advent activities that I did with the boys during December. Even last year, I was thinking ahead to how I wanted to make this year's Advent season special. Last year The Crafty Crow did posts about Christmas books and related activities, one for each day leading up to Christmas. Then on another blog (I can't remember which one) I had read about an idea I really liked where you wrap up a bunch of children's Christmas books and read one together each day during the Advent season. To tweak the idea a little bit, I thought it would be really fun to do an activity to go with each book, kind of like our Advent activities from last year. Then as I thought about it more, I thought it would be REALLY great to make an ornament to go with each book. The boys could each make the same ornament and we could hang all our Advent book ornaments on one special tree.


I know it's still July, but it's really not too early to start planning this so I'm not stressed out at the last minute. So today I decided to go through the Christmas books we have and choose the ones I'll focus on. Then I searched the web for related ornament ideas. Then I looked at the list of books and activities from The Crafty Crow and ordered a few more books from Amazon to round out our selection. For the next few weeks, I'll be doing some short posts about the books I've chosen and will describe the ornaments I'm thinking about making including links to directions, patterns, etc. In addition to (hopefully) giving all of you readers some new ideas for your Christmas season, this process will motivate me to get all my book projects organized WAY early so they are good to go once December rolls around. Wouldn't it be great to just pull out a tub right after Thanksgiving with all the books and activities ready? That's my goal. For my list, I have only chosen 15 books. I learned from our Advent activities last year that it is sometimes really hard to fit in an activity every single day, especially during the very busy month of December. By choosing 15 books, I'm allowing for those days when we really won't have time to do a project. I'm also still contemplating how I'll organize everything. So it's not all figured out yet, but I think I have enough time to get it planned. :0)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, Laura, you are organized, planning for advent now. Flylady would be very proud of you. I look forward to your ideas. One year I did a Jesse tree with girls in my Brownie pack who were working on their religion in life emblems. We made very simple ornaments, colouring a photocopied symbol and gluing the symbol and corresponding bible verse to a construction paper circle. We did add glitter to the circles! At mass each week the girls would bring up the ornaments for the week, read the verses and hang them on the tree. It was fun. I really like your idea of the books and ornaments/crafts to go with the stories. That sounds like something my daughters could do with my grandkids.

AndieF said...

Thank you for doing this now. I just finished a Christmas in July crafting party, but I'd love to get our advent things, especially the books, lined up now so that I'm not scrambling around 5 minutes before I want to do something. Not that I EVER did that last advent.

Katherine Marie! said...

I adore this special book idea!!!! Guess I need to get moving... Even though it's only Sept I feel a bit behind. THANK you for the inspiration.
And that red and white polka dot paper is my all time favorite! Hobby Lobby?