Christmas Unit Ideas....

[ivkins]

This is my first year hsing my 3 and 5 yo dd's. We are going to do an entire month of December as a Christmas Unit. Any suggestions? Simple, Fun, and Fun are my only pre-req's!

[AngelBee]

No ideas....but will look.

[AAK]

Christmas around the world! Take a few different countries and find out about traditional foods, games, traditions. Have your children "travel" to these places and participate (make some food, make a craft) in their traditions. If you family has specific heritage I would focus on those countries.

Amy

[Lillian J]

This site is loaded with links to lots of sites with good ideas:
Marilee's Winter Holiday Links.

Lillian

[elizawill]

Originally Posted by AAK

Christmas around the world! Take a few different countries and find out about traditional foods, games, traditions. Have your children "travel" to these places and participate (make some food, make a craft) in their traditions. If you family has specific heritage I would focus on those countries.

Amy

yes, this is what we do. we'll even make an ornament & put it on the tree for each country we visit. most of our ideas came from "galloping the globe", however, their are tons of resources at our library or on the internet as well.

[Momma Aimee]

subbing

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Christmas or Advent or Both?

[ivkins]

Originally Posted by Momma Aimee

subbing

Also

Christmas or Advent or Both?

Anything! Both!

[AAK]

Advent candles, advent wreaths. Make and explain what they are and why they are used. This year, my kids are going to make advent candles out of beeswax. Either get an advent calendar or just make a christmas countdown out of a paper chain. Make some ornaments (make a bunch of the same type and find a place for the kids to give some away) If you can, do one of those shoeboxes for Samaritan's purse, talk about helping others. Sing carols to people at a nursing home with some friends.

Let them pretend to be santa (if you do santa). Bake cookies/candies for neighbors/friends/family.

Amy

[Momma Aimee]

we do a lot of specfic advent reading

we make salt-dough decoartion for the boys to paint (I save one from each boy each year for them when they are grown) to give as gifts

this year we are going to try to make bookmarks to give as gifts if i can come up with a good way.

We do a service count down -- each day of advent we choose a service project -- cookie for the guy next door, or deep clean something in the house or send cards to daddy's office or ______

This year (4 and 2) we are going to focuse more on on the Christmas Story" in Luke tha we have in teh past years ....

I really want to tie all the arts and crafts and holidy stuff we do together adn "show" how it all relates to advent and the waiting fo the birth of Christ and preparing our hearts for the Birth of Christ ... rather than jsut have it all be "random" holiday stuff ............but i am not sure how. I guess we will jsut try to talk about it alont.

We tried a Jesse Tree last year, but Theo was not getting it, putting it together, and it was hard -- we tried to do it as a family, when Daddy got home, and Theo was not able to focuse at that pioint. I want to try that again at 4 and 6 ..

here are some of the books i am looking at:

Advent & Lent Activities for Children: Camels, Carols, Crosses, and Crowns

Advent in the Home: Activities for Families

and maybe this one:

it is Catholic -- which we are not -- (I grew up as such) butttt I can not find anything even remotely like it in a "general Christian" flavor ....and Advent is Advent for goodness sakes:

Christmas Mosaic, An Illustrated Book Study for Advent and Christmas




Aimee

[Catherine12]

The other day we were drinking hot spiced cider using cinnamon sticks as straws and dd (who is 5yo) commented, "This looks like wood!" After another minute, she asked "Is it wood?" ... and we spent much of the morning researching where all the spices in our cider came from. Actually very interesting - we found some videos on youtube of clove harvesting, and peeling cinnamon bark. It ties into geography too. It's kind of christmassy, since a lot of people associate these spices with christmas food.