Kids Advent Resources
Believe it or not, Advent is right around the corner. Advent is a time to remember the promised arrival of our Savior, Jesus, and await His promised return. It's easy to let the busyness of the Christmas season overtake us and become distracted from focusing on preparing our hearts to celebrate the birth of Christ. There are so many wonderful family Advent resources and maybe your family already has some great traditions you do each year. However, I know sometimes it's nice to have some new inspiration or maybe your family has never really celebrated Advent before and sifting through all the options on the internet is overwhelming. In an effort to simplify, I've selected a few ideas to share with you. I hope these will be a blessing to your family as we look forward to celebrating the birth of our Savior.
One way to help yourself stick to your plan to celebrate Advent is to put in some time upfront to plan out what activities will fit your family and schedule best. Taking a bit of time in the next few days to select which resources you'd like to use and plan out what points in your day and week you plan to use them will help tremendously as we head into December.
Jesus Storybook Bible Advent Ornaments:
This is something that my family has personally used the past several years and we love it. You can download the free ornament printables here. It's all explained on their webpage but essentially you print the ornaments pages, cut them out, hole punch the top and now you have an ornament for each day of Advent with a picture that corresponds to a Jesus Storybook Bible Story. We like to read our story of the day before we start our bedtime routine. After the story is finished we hang the matching ornament on our little tree. The anticipation that builds within the kids as they look forward to this time each evening of preparing our hearts is such a joy.
Birthday Party for Jesus:
Celebrate Christmas morning/day like you would a birthday in your family. Make a birthday cake and include the kids as much as possible. There are tons of neat ideas for decorating the cake if you do a quick Google Images search for Jesus birthday cake. Or do what we do, and incorporate the party into our normal Christmas morning breakfast. We add confetti sprinkles to the pancakes and let the kids blow out candles while we sing "happy birthday" to Jesus.
Advent Challenge:
Sadly, the time leading up to Christmas can often turn into a very self focused time for our children. One where they are fixated on adding ideas to their gift list and looking forward to their new presents come Christmas morning. While it is so much fun to give and receive gifts as we celebrate Jesus' birth, we would be doing our kids a huge disservice if we didn't encourage and model to them what it looks like to be outwardly focused in obedience to God. God has called us to care more for others than ourselves and this season can be a great time to focus on this as you do the work to shape little hearts to become image bearers of Christ. Check out the "PR KIDS Advent Challenge" that includes a family devotional for each week of Advent and application activities for your kids to encourage them to look outwards. Each of the application activities are also printed on an ornament design for you to print and cut out. Kids can hang the paper ornament on the tree after they complete the application activity. If you have more than one child in your home, you may consider printing a set for each child.
PR KIDS Advent Spotify Playlist:
Consider playing a song before your nightly family devotional time. Or play it each time you are in the car! Maybe it would work best for you to use this playlist as a background soundtrack while you prep dinner. Whatever the way, take some time and plan out when you think might be your best time to incorporate music into your Advent worship. You can find the Prov Road Advent Spotify playlist here.
Full Album Ideas:
Rain for Roots Waiting Songs - a kids Advent album. A few are included on the playlist but it’s a great Advent album.
Slugs and Bugs Sing the Bible Family Christmas. It’s straight scripture set to music, another good one for families.
Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God. Meant to be listened to from start to finish, tells the whole story of the coming of Christ, starting in the Old Testament.
Plan Now:
Consistency during this busy season can be difficult. Here's my last bit of encouragement to plan now, so you are ready to go in a couple weeks to start whatever activities your family has chosen. I usually set a recurring calendar reminder to go off about 10 minutes before we start our bedtime routine that says "Advent Devotional" so we don't get behind or forget!
Wishing you and your family an intentional and heart shaping 2020 Advent season!
