I just thought I'd share a few of our favorite Advent-related toys and books. There are so many things out there and it's always hard for me to know which books are actually going to be any good, so thought I'd share what we're using this year.
First up is our Little People Nativity, which I think everyone has at least heard of. My only qualm with it is that there are no shepherds, so when we talk about the shepherds I usually just pretend Joseph is a shepherd because he looks like one ;) But Cooper loves Little People, so he really does enjoy this. We pulled it out last year and he liked holding all the people. This year he plays with them and names them all. We use them when singing songs or reading books to show different parts of what we're talking about, we love "making the angel sing" by swinging it all around whenever we sing "Gloria" or "Noel, Noel..." and we even had the wisemen follow a star around to Baby Jesus on the day we sang We Three Kings. It's easy for him to hold all the pieces and gets him into it.
In addition to our song a day, we're still trying to do a little devotional each Sunday. So the first 3 Sundays in December we're reading a different board book and then starting the 23, we're planning to read the Christmas stories out of the Jesus Storybook Bible leading up to Christmas Day. There are so many awesome plans for using the Jesus Storybook Bible through the month of December and we love it so much and hope to do it soon-- my friend Erin is going through it with her kiddos if you want more info.
So the three board books we're using to tell the Christmas story are:
Song of the Stars- I bought this one for Cooper's stocking last year. It is by the same author as the Storybook Bible and it talks about the birth of Jesus from the perspective of creation. It's very poetic and this year Cooper loves all the animals in it!
The Story of Christmas- This one is probably my least favorite, but still a good one. We bought it on our Christmas date the year before Cooper was born where we picked out Christmas books at Barnes and Noble. This one is a retelling of the Christmas story to a group of kids.
Christmas in the Manger- I just bought this one this year and I think it's my favorite for Cooper's age. It goes through all the nativity characters and gives just a few sentences about them. This one was great to use with our Little People.
and while it's not technically Christmas themed, we love The Greatest Story ABC and read it a lot. It's basically the overarching story of the Bible and the Gospel written in an ABC book. I've read it to Cooper some of the days where we've sung songs about waiting for Jesus because it talks about all the things God did in the Old Testament and then how he was silent for a long time but he was getting things ready for Jesus to come. It's a sweet reminder of the reason we're celebrating. We read this one regularly throughout the year during our Sunday devotionals!
Just thought I'd share in case anyone's looking for some new books! Those are a few we like.
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