Week One:
First candle: hope
On the nature table: stars and stones
Festival: St. Nicholas Day
Songs: Advent is a Time to Wait, Candle-lighting song, and We Go in Peace (all from Seasons of Joy Advent E-book, continued each week), O Come, O Come Emmanuel; People Look East (adding verses throughout Advent); Kind Old Man St. Nicholas
Stories: St. Nicholas stories by Christine Natale
Books: A St. Nicholas Story: The Fiercest Little Animal in the Forest, The Baker's Dozen: A St. Nicholas Tale, The Real St. Nicholas: Tales of Generosity and Hope From Around the World, The Miracle of the Wooden Shoes
Activities: Felted stones, kite paper window stars, St. Nicholas spice cookies, attending the Christkindl Markt
Sariah, all on her own, prepared and presented a short play about Mary and Baby Jesus. Below is her own Baby Jesus, cut out of paper. She is such a creative girl!
We began with an almost-bare nature table and sky. The first week, the stones "wake up" to the fact that Jesus is coming. We felted stones and also put some favorite cool rocks on the table. We added stars to the sky every day, so that by the time Christmas Eve is here, the sky will be completely lit up.
Christmas Around the World was our theme, and this week we "traveled" to Germany to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. We were lucky in that the nearby city hosted it's first annual Christkindlmarkt or German Christmas market. We got to see live reindeer, and Sariah got to march in the St. Nicholas parade as well as say hello to St. Nicholas himself. Unfortunately, I lost all the pictures of that event.
Sweet Sariah really loved this festival, and the concept of St. Nicholas touched her deeply. We told stories every night leading up to St. Nicholas Day, and she really loved those stories. She even prayed that St. Nicholas would be able to find our house safely and that his horse wouldn't get lost.
We made German spice cookies:
The children set out their shoes and in the morning found them filled with oranged, chocolate, coins, and walnuts.
Nativity scenes magically appeared at various locations around the house:
And Christmas-y paintings appeared on the walls:
The windows lit up with stars:
And Raggedy Ann and Andy found themselves under the mistletoe.
Week Two:
Second Candle: Love
On the nature table: plants
Festival: Santa Lucia
Songs: O Holy Night, O Christmas Tree, Santa Lucia
Stories: Santa Lucia
Books: The Tomten, The Tomten and the Fox, Christmas in Noisy Village, Peter and Lotta's Christmas, Findus at Christmas
Activities: Forcing bulbs, making pinecone Jultomtens (Swedish Christmas elves), baking Lussekatter (St. Lucia buns), making a felt Lucia crown and Star Boy hats, wax-dipped pinecone ornaments
More stars appeared in the sky by the end of this week.
We planted amaryllis and paperwhite narcissus. Maybe they'll bloom by Christmas? We added pinecones and moss to the nature table.
This week we "traveled" to Sweden to celebrate the festival of Santa Lucia. We made Jultomtens and read our favorite Astrid Lindgren books about the Tomten.
To celebrate St. Lucia, Mom made Star Boy hats and a felt crown. Sariah helped me wet-felt the red berries. We also baked the traditional saffron buns.
We were a day late, but the children insisted on waking mom and dad up in the morning to eat buns in bed. I didn't have a beautiful white dress and red sash for Sariah, but she still looked adorable.
Dallin thought that banging pots and pans must surely be part of the festivities, despite much parental counsel to the contrary.
My Star Boys were adorable, if I do say so myself.
I bought a double boiler at the thrift store cheap, and we have been making candles and other wax crafts. This idea came from the Magic Onions blog.
Week Three:
Third Candle: Joy
On the nature table: animals
Festival: Las Posadas
Songs: Joy to the World, The Friendly Beasts
Books: Carlos, Light the Farolito, The Night of Las Posadas, and The Legend of the Poinsettia (last two both by Tomie de Paola), The Donkey's Dream
Activities: we were supposed to make birdseed pinecones for our feathered friends, but that didn't happen. We did make pinatas. We were supposed to make bunuelos and Mexican hot chocolate but that didn't pan out either. The week before Christmas is just too hard!
Adorable donkies hang out near the cave. The children thought at least one bird need to be in the tree.
As expected, this was a busy and crazy week. So the actors in the posadas play ended up reading their parts. Daddy played Joseph, Sariah played Mary, Dallin was innkeeper #2, and we recruited one of his friends to be the first innkeeper. Ours was not an authentic production because we did it for only one night and had only two innkeepers... but the kids got the idea. We were supposed to learn the authentic Posadas song, but that didn't happen either.
Preston's pinata on the left, Dallin's in the middle, Sariah's on the right. These are homemade from scratch out of papier mache.
Week Four
Fourth Candle: peace
On the nature table: humans (and angels)
Festival: Christmas
Songs: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
Stories: The Cloak (Winter Wynstones), The Lantern (same book)
Books: The Carpenter's Gift, Good King Wenceslas, The Christmas Train, Christmas Day in the Morning, Silent Night by Susan Jeffers
Activities: wool angels, Nativity transparencies (still to come, hopefully)
Obviously, it is not yet Week Four of Advent. Because there is really only one day of week four, and that is Christmas Eve, we incoporated some our our week four things at the end of week three. And true confessions... we actually read most of these books earlier in the month. I've just listed them here because they are all about human beings serving and they fit with this last theme of humans. I told the story of The Cloak earlier in the week. It is a truly beautiful story, and it touched me deeply. It is about a poor widow who wants to weave a wool cloak for her son for Christmas. He is leaving to be a soldier in a foreign land. She can'd find time to work on the cloak because she is so busy working and meeting other obligations. (I totally related to her character!) She is beyond exhausted. She remembers a legend that says that close to Christmas, Mother Mary gathers stars from the winter sky to weave into a cloak for her Son. She has a dream in which she sees Mary and asks for some star threads for her own son's cloak, but instead of giving them, Mary asks her sternly, "What have you done to help me make my Son's cloak?" When she awakens, she can't remember the dream. It seems that every time she sits down to work on weaving the cloak, she is interrupted by someone in need--a homeless beggar, a neighbor child who's mother is ill, and finally, by finding an abandoned baby on the side of the rode. Of course she stops her work to help these people, and each time, she finds a mysterious golden thread lying near the spot where the person was, which she weaves into her cloth, not knowing their significance. Finally at the end of the story she remembers her dream and realizes that these threads are her gift for her contributions to the Christ Child. This story really fit how I've been feeling this Christmas as I try to cultivate beautiful traditions and gifts for my family, as well as trying to carve out spiritual time for myself, while being constantly bombarded with obligations and others' needs.
We actually told The Lantern the week before Thanksgiving, before Advent began. It is also about three travelers trying to find the Christ Child, and only the one who stops to help others in need is able to find the way to the stable. These two stories were wonderful bookends to our holiday season.
The nature table seems to overflow now with visitors to see the newborn King. Mary and Joseph are making their way to the stable (each day they come close to the nature table... they will be moved onto the table soon and will gradually be moved closer to the stable.) Baby Jesus will not take his place in the manger until Christmas Eve.
I made these orange and lemon candles to give to friends. Such an easy idea from Living Crafts magazine!
Obviously I have not blogged in a very long time. We completed two main lesson blocks during that time: Man and Animal and Norse Myths. (Well, we did four weeks of Norse myths, and we'll do two more after Christmas.) Maybe I'll blog about those, but then again, I may never get to it! The first two weeks in December, I held off any main lesson work. While we spent lots of time on holiday activities, I had Dallin do independent work in math and grammar (Holiday Mad Libs are a great way to practice grammar!). He also read The Hobbit. I started out having him do a book report, but honestly, that kind of fizzled out. I have been exhausted and a bit burned out too! Hopefully the time off after Christmas will rejuvenate me!
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