Advent Activities

I mentioned with our Advent song list that I would share activities that we did to go along with the songs as we came up with them.  We didn't do things every day or even most days, but there were a few things we tried along the way that I thought I'd share here to have all in one place.

I mentioned that we use the Little People Nativity to act out different songs and books.  One of the things we do a lot is make the angels "sing" by moving them all around during certain choruses of songs like Angels We Have Heard on High and The First Noel.  So now every time Cooper hears "gloria" in a song while we're listening to music he goes and gets the angel and pretends like it's singing.

The day we sang "We Three Kings" we got out our star cookie cutter and had the wisemen from the nativity follow the star to baby Jesus.  I moved it all over the room and Cooper would move the wisemen to it and then we'd move it again, including up on places he could climb to get to it and move all around.  We have plans to possibly try having a moving star that the wisemen follow every day of Advent in the future (like Star from Afar) but we didn't think Cooper would get it yet, but it was a perfect activity for one morning!

And we made drums for The Little Drummer Boy.  I used some old formula and snack containers and covered them with different papers.  Then I let Cooper color them and put stickers on them while I made breakfast.

We punched holes in one and added a stretchy ribbon so he could wear it.  He loves playing his drum to the music!

And Jingle Bells is one of his absolute favorite songs this year.  So we made some bell noisemakers for the day we sang "Ring Christmas Bells."  We talked about how every time we sing songs and ring bells it reminds us that Jesus is King!   He also learned this version of "Jingle Bells" at CBS this year, so we sing this one a lot: Christmas Bells, Christmas Bells, Ring them all the day.  Tell the world that Jesus came to take our sins away!

He couldn't be happier than when he gets to ring his jingle bells!

And for "O Holy Night" we tried out a nativity sensory bin.  I basically just used blue paper shreds that we had to represent the night and then added our nativity pieces to it along with our star cookie cutter.  Nothing too interesting, but it did give Cooper a renewed interest in the nativity pieces.

He played in the bin for a minute, but once he saw the star he just wanted to move everything around like the day we followed the star.  So he gathered all of it in his hands and moved everything around to different places in the room.  It was a little hard to hold it all at once, but he had a blast.

Those were just a few simple things we tried this year that we'll likely do again next year, and hopefully we'll have a few things to add next year too!