Last Sunday's candle-lighting was about as close to a magical experience as you can get with three children in the house. We turned the lights down, had the tree lights twinkling and the candle burning, and the children were approaching reverence. We did a lot of singing, adding several new songs from the Seasons of Joy Advent e-book, which has been a much-used resource in my planning for the past several years. The children actually sat still and listened to the scriptures I read. After we had blown out the candle, we read stories from our ever-growing collection of Christmas books. It was the perfect start to the season!
I got a new book called Good Tidings of Great Joy: An Advent Celebration of the Savior's Birth, by Eric Huntsman, who is a religion professor at BYU. I have appreciated having an LDS perspective on observing Advent. I have been reading from this book every morning, as he also has alot of commentary on the scriptural accounts surrounding the Savior's birth. It is fascinating! He also has a website: http://hccl.byu.edu/faculty/HuntsmanE/Advent/index.htm
Monday morning I had our nature table all set up:
The nature table will go through a four-week progression leading up to Christmas. This past week was mineral week. We had no plants, animals, or people on the table except Mary and Joseph (lower right hand corner of the photo), getting ready to embark on their journey to the stable. Other than that, all that was on the nature table was a path of pebbles, some shells, some stars, and some beautiful rocks hand-picked by Dallin from his collection. I also set up our dark sky background, which will glow with more and more felt stars each day until Christmas Eve, when we will put the large, bright Star of Bethlehem in the sky.
I really love this poem that we've been reciting as part of our morning circle time:
Hushabye, hushabye, holy night,
angels have brought the Child of Light:
All mankind shall gently bear Him,
all the beasts shall nestle near Him,
all the flowers shall adore Him,
all the stones shall kneel before Him,
all the world shall worship Him,
Cherabim and Seraphim.
(from the Winter Wynstones book)
As you can see, we start at the end with the stones, and over the four weeks will be working our way up to "all mankind" being represented on the nature table.
A few shells and a glittering star.
Every morning we've been having circle time with all the children, which is something new for us. We've been lighting the Advent candle(s) every morning as well, and I hope our first candle makes it to Christmas without completely melting away. One thing that's amazed me this year is how much Dallin has begun to enjoy singing and poetry. Never in a million years would I have guessed this!
This month we are doing a block called Stories of Light, from Marsha Johnson's files. Each week we will be focusing on a winter holiday dealing with light. This past week we talked about the Star of Bethlehem and the wisemen. Next we will look at the winter solstice and Hanukkah.
I found this wonderful little book, complete with samples of real gold, frankincense, and myrrh, that we used in our discussions. It also had some great pictures that helped provide a model for Dallin's main lesson book drawings.
To complement our stories of the Magi, we discussed astronomy this week. We talked about some of the most famous constellations that are visible in winter. Dallin was thrilled one non-cloudy night when I took him outside to see Orion and it was clearly visible. Below are some of his drawings of Orion, Pisces, Ursa Minor, Cassiopeia, and the Norther Cross. We were never able to get a view of any of the others besides Orion. On Friday we went on a field trip to the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City, where we were able to watch a star show about the stories behind the constellations. Once again, the teacher learns more than the students! I had no idea that the Greeks believed that the world became so evil that all the gods and goddesses left earth and went up into the sky as the constellations. One thing that was mentioned in the show was how the sky looked pretty much the same thousands of years ago as it does today. That has caused me a lot of reflection. So much about the earth has changed that ancient peoples would hardly recognize it--but the sky is just the same. When we go outside (at least, in an area away from city lights), what we see is what the ancient Greeks saw when they stepped outside their homes. I also think that ancient people paid more attention to their natural surroundings because they didn't have the distractions we have today. No streetlights, no cars driving past, no stores with screaming neon signs. Just darkness and stars. In many ways, it must have been really nice.
We talked about the myths and legends surrounding the three wisemen. Many legends hold that the three wisemen came from three different countries, the East, the South, and the West--representing all the areas of the known world at that time. The legends also say that one was young, one was middle-aged, and one was elderly. These characterizations, while they may not be true, are symbolic. The wisemen represent all the people of the earth, and peoples of all ages who seek for Christ. I think that is quite profound! I thought it was interesting listening to tonight's LDS First Presidency Christmas Devotional, where they showed a short video clip portraying the visit of the Magi, that they were portrayed as three men of different ages and races.
Dallin made a main lesson book page for each of the three kings. We used their legendary names. As practice in our learning about adjectives, I had him write four words describing each wiseman, at least describing what he might have imagined them to be like. Caspar was his favorite.
In our circle time, we sang We Three Kings of Orient Are, which Dallin loved. It has many verses, and he insisted on singing them all. I gave him the option of writing a summary of the wisemen's story or copying the text to the song, and he chose the song.
One other fun activity we did with adjectives was to have Dallin draw three large stars in his notebook. In the center of each star we wrote a noun relating to astronomy. He chose the words star, night, and sky. In the five points of each store, he had to write five adjectives describing the nouns he had selected.
We made stained glass cookies in star shapes. Note to self: Next time, remember to line the pans with waxed paper!
One day I had the kids paint nighttime skies with watercolor. It was neat to see how each one of us did our painting a bit differently. We used two shades of blue and some crimson red for touches of purple. Sariah did a deep blue and purple midnight sky. Dallin said mine was more like twilight, and his, above, was streaked with white clouds. He worked very carefully on his painting and talked his way through making it look as realistic as possible. Then we cut star shapes in the paper, backed the holes with gold kite paper, and hung them in the window so the light could shine through.
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