Advent and Kids Kindness Calendar | This Gathered Nest
Every year I try to come up with some new and fun ways for our kids to focus on the real meaning of Christmas. We want to help them learn how much better it is to give instead of receive, and when we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, how truly special and meaningful that makes Christmas.
One thing we always do is some kind of Advent calendar, usually using the Jesus Storybook Bible. This year I found this Advent Journey that was created by another adoptive mama! All the proceeds from this advent are going towards their adoption costs, talk about a win-win!
Advent9
I also found a random act of kindness calendar on Pinterest and thought it would be fun to modify it and update it to work for our family! I really want my children to become cheerful and glad givers, as well as focusing more this season on Jesus, which is what we are really celebrating. Feel free to download this calendar if you think your family could use it too! (excuse any errors, I made it very quickly so we could started tomorrow!)
Kindness Calendar
Another thing we do is make a seasonal bucket list. We typically do this for Summer, Fall and Christmas. I go through and make a list of all the things we would like to do that season and we just plug them into our calendar where we can! We never make it all the way through the list, but it does help me to not let time get away from me. In years past, I would dream up all these things we could do and yet they would never happen. At least in my house, if it's not on the calendar, it rarely happens!Here are some examples of what I put on our list this year:
Christmas Light ( The speedway and a town near us that does a big display) We usually stop for coffee and hot chocolate on the way!
Zoo Lights
Movie Nights with PJ's and Popcorn
Ice Skating
Snow Tubing
Christmas at Great Wolf Lodge (it's free!)
Making and delivering treats for friends and neighbors
Those are a few examples of the things we hope to do this Christmas season. Of course, packing for China and preparing our home for Rosie are going to take some time as well, so we don't pressure ourselves to do every little thing. But it's a good blueprint! :)
I'd love to hear what traditions you have started with your family, or if you have ones you plan to start this year!
I pray you all have a blessed and Merry Christmas!
-Angela