His Treasure Seekers

Daily Theme (from the Jesse Tree LEGO Challenge): Jesse Tree (focusing on the prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament and the people’s anticipation of the Savior)

Books:

Baby Jesus is Born by Juliet David (for Arianna)

The Light of Christmas by Dandi Daley Mackall (for Elijah)

Now that it’s December, our Advent celebration is in full swing (since a few of our activities just start on December 1 regardless of when Advent really begins, which is the fourth Sunday before Christmas).  There are several things we do each day, and we’ve found it works best to have one child do them all on his or her special day.  Today was Ian’s turn, so he got to open a door on our wooden Advent calendar, place the item he found inside wherever he chose, hang our Jesse Tree ornament, light the candle on our Advent wreath during Bible Time, and blow it out after prayers.  (This picture is from last year, when we’d already opened several items.  Right now it only has one star, but Ian did put it in the exact same corner.)  Elijah and Arianna got to open our books (above), and we read them throughout the day.

We started the Jesse Tree LEGO Challenge from Tauna at Proverbial Homemaker, using it to kick off our family Bible Time in the evening.  First we read the Scripture together, and then hung the day’s ornament on the small tree in our school room that acts as our Jesse Tree.  By the time we get to Christmas, it will tell the whole story of Jesus.

Today the building project was a stump.  Ian also included a mini-figure as the shoot coming out of the stump.  Since we’d talked about how the shoot represented Jesus, he wanted a person.

We let the kids build while we read from Jotham’s Journey.  We closed by praying and singing several verses of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” focusing on this one:

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse’s stem

From ev’ry foe deliver them

That trust Thy mighty power to save,

And give them vict’ry o’er the grace.

Rejoice! Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

 

 

Daily Theme: Christmas Trees

Books:

Jesus, Me and My Christmas Tree by Crystal Bowman (for Arianna-3)

The Pine Tree Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs (for Elijah-5)

The Legend of the Christmas Tree by Rick Osborne (for Ian)

I’m going to try to give you a glimpse into our Advent celebration this year.  I may not manage to blog every day, but I’ll try to cover what we do.

Each day in December leading up to Christmas, one child will open a door on our wooden Advent calendar, and the other two older ones get to unwrap a book for us to read together.  Since we didn’t have a door to open today, I passed out 3 books instead, focusing on the theme I chose for the day: Christmas Trees.  They were already on our minds because we’d spent yesterday getting all our Christmas decorations out, so it seemed like a good time to talk about the symbolism behind Christmas trees, reviewing what we learned in Buck Denver asks…Why Do They Call It Christmas?, which we watched last night after our decorating was done.  I want them to think of Jesus every time they see a Christmas tree, and focusing on it for the whole day right at the beginning of the season seemed like a good way to work toward that goal.

For our evening Bible Time, we lit the first candle on our Advent wreath, started reading Jotham’s Journey by Arnold Ytreeide, and sang the first two verses of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”  It was fun seeing Arianna’s sweet face lit up with the wonder of this special moment.  The boys remembered our Advent devotions from last year and were excited to be reading by candlelight once again, but it was all new to her.  The only thing I would change about this time was that I only read from the book.  All three of the kids pointed out the fact that we never got our Bibles out.  Jotham’s Journey ends each day’s reading with a devotional based on Scriptures, so I thought that was enough, but I think tomorrow we’ll have everyone get out their Bibles the way we usually do so they can read the verses themselves.