This past week has been soo much fun making our Truth in the Tinsel ornaments with my two little girls. Allie is 4 and Kat is just a few days shy of 18 months. Kat has been particularly excited to participate and make her own crafts. her favorite part is when she gets to use the glue. I dip a q-tip in some regular white glue and let her apply it. She gets this beaming smile on her face and the whole room lights up. I love seeing that and it makes my heart melt to see her have soo much confidence in herself.
We start each night by visiting our advent calendar to see what our clue will be for the night. I made the advent calendar out of 4 pages of baseball card sheet protectors that I overlapped and taped together so that it was a 5×5 rectangle. I cut out all of the clues and glued them to red and green card stock. I numbered each clue with the appropriate number and slid the cards into the inserts. Easy advent calendar and I had everything in my closet already. I like to get creative with my materials and I’ve found lots of uses for those baseball card sheet protectors.
Once we find out our clue, we say a prayer and then read the passage from the Bible. Some nights I let the girls start working on their ornaments while I’m reading. However, I always make sure they are listening and engaged by having them listen for the clue in the story. Whenever they hear me say the clue I have them shout it out. Allie had a ball last night when the clues were Elizabeth and Mary because I said their names over and over again. She shouted out their names and cheered me on.
We’ve been using the printable ornaments for every day so far except for the first night. We have been adding some extra pieces to the printables though so they aren’t as flat. Glitter glue is Allie’s favorite accessory to any art and craft. Her Zechariah ornament has a huge pile of glitter glue on it and she’s soo proud of it. We’ve used other things like tinsel for the wings of Gabriel, rice for Mary’s hair, and googley eyes to act as the babies in the wombs of Elizabeth and Mary. Adding those little extra pieces makes the craft that much more fun when using the printed paper ornaments.
Here are our ornaments that we have made so far this week.
Day 1: Light Ornaments embellished with colored tissue paper
Day 2: Kingdom Ornaments embellished with glitter glue
Day 3: Zechariah Ornaments embellished with glitter glue
Day 4: Gabriel Ornaments embellished with tinsel for wings
Day 5: Mary Ornaments embellished with rice for hair
Day 6: Elizabeth and Mary Ornaments embellished with googley eyes for babies
We’ve really enjoyed doing a nightly craft each day. I think this would be a lot of fun to do each month with a different theme. We use it at the end of the day as a way to wind down and it has worked great. It’s still not too late to get your own copy of Truth in the Tinsel and printable ornaments to do at home with your family. If you already have them or are doing something similar what do your ornaments look like? When do you do your advent calendar activities?
