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Advent Week 1

This week has flown by.  It's been a good week, and in some ways it's been nice not to have to plan a bunch of preschool activities.  We've mostly been doing child-led learning, and that's been going great.  Little Buddy had his first reading lesson this week.  I wrote down some simple words on his doodle board, and he sounded out each of the letters.  He didn't want to say the sounds "fast" nor did he make the jump to putting all the sounds together.  Instead, he just wanted me to write another word so he could sound out its letters.

He's also really enjoying borrowing our computers to write out his name which usually looks something like this a lot of each letter both upper and lower case.  I'm looking forward to when we have a computer that is sorta "his".

This is our first year really celebrating Advent.  Of course, we've always celebrated for Christmas and couldn't wait for it to come, but this year is different.  Having our advent calendar include prepared Bible readings that talk about different aspects of Christ's birth and doing activities that help reinforce those readings is invaluably helpful in keeping a right perspective during this holiday season.

This is also our first year doing an Advent Wreath.  The church I grew up in didn't have one, so I'm kind of figuring it out as we go along.  I was given a wreath last year with a little handbook with readings and songs to guide us through the weeks.  Little Buddy loved doing the wreath this last Sunday.  He keeps asking us to do it again, and we keep telling him we'll do it after we go to church next Sunday.  Now, he just asks us if we are going to church that day.  He can't wait to do it again.  (Probably his favorite part was trying to blow out the candle when we were finished.)



Putting up our nativity set was a hit.  We talked about each piece, and we saved Baby Jesus until last.  I put him in a little box and told Little Buddy about how people waited a long time for Him to come and that He was a special gift.  Little Buddy got to open the box and put Jesus in the manger.  We had a baby friend come over later that day, and he couldn't wait to show her Baby Jesus.  It was super cute.

Little Buddy didn't really enjoy our angel craft, but he loved making our nativity set.  It got the idea from Mama Jenn, and I think Little Buddy played with his creation for almost an hour afterwards.



We also made cookies for our cookie party on Saturday.  He especially enjoyed rolling out the dough and making Christmas tree cookies.  He wanted to know if we had a Baby Jesus cookie cutter.

On Saturday we celebrated Little Buddy's birthday in the morning.  We gave him his birthday presents: a Lightening McQueen backpack, Hallelujah! Handel CD, and a bunch of Lincoln Logs.  He was super excited and wanted to play with his Lincoln Logs right away while wearing his backpack and listening to the music!


In the evening, we had a bunch of our neighbors over for a Christmas Cookie party.  It's our third year doing this, and we've really had a great time doing it.  There was lots of sugar and lots of very excited kiddos.

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