In my last post I gave you all a list of some of our very favorite Christmas Books. I also promised to share a bit more about what I am calling our Advent Morning Time plans. We are mostly taking the whole month of December off school. However I don’t want complete chaos and no structure and I want to focus on the wonder of the birth of Christ. So I created a simple schedule including some lovely resources I have found.
The basic components of the plan include a daily advent reading and daily listening to Handel’s Messiah, poetry, weekly art study, weekly nature focus, weekly handicraft, and a hymn, folksong, scripture, and poem that we will work on all month.
For our daily Advent readings this year I am planning to use this free guide to go along with the Jesus Storybook Bible. This looks super simple and great especially for my younger children.
Our other daily reading/ composer study will be using Cindy Rollin’s Hallelujah A Journey Through Advent with Handel’s Messiah. I plan to play the daily selection from the Messiah while reading the Scripture verse that goes with it and then allowing my children to draw or do some other activity. I also used this last year, it is set up to be used as simply as you like or more in depth if desired. At the beginning of each week there is also a hymn, poem and a longer scripture passage, which I will try to include on Sundays. There is also the option in this book for celebrations, including recipes, which look fun but I am not going to stress about doing this year.
For poetry I plan to choose various selections from Ambleside online as well as Hallelujah mentioned above and our art study guide that I will talk about next. I will try to include a poem read aloud most days.
I think I am most excited about the art study resource I found this year. I have used the resourses from Rebecca at A Humble Place in the past for Art Study and was excited to see a lovely set of God With Us: Advent Art Devotions available on her website! This is a beautiful set that includes four pieces of artwork, poetry, hymns, and scripture. I plan to use this once a week and then hang each art piece for us to enjoy throughout the season.
For our handicraft we will do a combination of things that are for fun and for gifts. Some we have done every year like cutting paper snowflakes to hang all over the house. Others will be new such as making a village using the Paper Sloyd skills we learned for handicraft this past term. We will also do a lot of baking, Including our favorite Christmas cookies.
I plan to have a nature focus each week and get outside for walks to observe things. So far I plan to focus on winter birds, evergreens, and snowflakes. Hopefully we will get a few nature journal entries done too.
Last, I also choose a hymn, a folksong, a poem and a Bible verse for us to learn all month. We will just sing or recite them each day at breakfast or lunch. Our hymn is Silent Night, our Folksong is The Cherry Tree Carol, our Scripture verse is Isaiah 9:6-7 and our poem is “A Christmas Carol” by GK Chesterton.
One More Thing…
… just for Mama. I am using this little book for my own advent devotion time: Wild Bells A Literary Advent. This slim little book has a reading for each day of December a piece of poetry or and excerpt from a book and a brief reflection to go along with it. I enjoyed reading through it last year and look forward to it again this year.
Leave a Reply