Life from the back of the pack : Superhero!

The girls attended a light party tonight, as superhero's so let me introduce......

Super space girl

Princess superhero

And Princess Erica space ranger .......

Villains, criminals and all future boyfriends ....

You have been warned!!

Crafting for Christmas: Nativity Story Sacks

Having heard about a travelling nativity at a children's work course earlier in the year I thought it would be great fun, but having got to the middle of October without doing anything about it I had pretty much shelved the idea.

Let's face it with getting ready for Christmas, helping out in a satellite warehouse for operation Christmas child, and planning a Christmas fair for school while getting ready to move house I really don't need another project.

But at the beginning of the week something changed, I am not really sure when or why but come Tuesday I had pretty much decided to give it a go - but would accept that it couldn't be hand made -at least not all of it!

So what is a travelling nativity? Essentially it's a nativity crib that is passed from house to house in advent giving children the opportunity to learn the real meaning of Christmas - in essence it's a story sack!

The key thing for me was that it should not be precious, something to put on a shelf out of harms way but that it should be something to play with, to interact with, acting out the story in play. This great set from playmobil is actually a reasonable price especially compared to the cost of some nativity sets. The kings are sold separately and haven't arrived yet but complete the scene nicely.

 

I included two versions of the story, one in the form of a book, they will be encouraged to open the advent windows during their visit and read the story together.

The other is in the form of cards with the relevant verses on the back from a great website 3dinosaurs.com

(Many of the resources I have used have come from this site definitely worth visiting.)

The cards can be used on the ring to tell the story but older children could use them to tell the story, or to put the story In order.

I have included some additional resources:

Pairs Game

Flash cards

Simple jigsaw

Colouring sheet (aware that some children may not have resources at home I included all that they would need to complete the worksheets.)

For the younger children I included a drawing template encouraging them to think about what they might give Jesus. For the older children this included a writting excercise.

Advent candle

Finally it would be great for each child to have their own nativity, so I included a card version to cut out and colour.

The Sunday school coordinator mentioned that it woul be nice if each family could add to the decoration on the bag, there didn't seem to be an easy way for them to do this so I came up with the idea of them decorating a tag and adding it to the bag, the tags could be a prayer, a verse, a quote from the children or simply something they have enjoyed.

So with the bag sorted it now needs to become mobile, this is a first so not sure just how well it will work but the idea is that people will sign up to take part, we will then put together a schedule each family will have the bag for a few days they will then arrange to visit the next family and hand over the bag.

So we will see - I will report back in the new year when Christmas will have come and gone, the shoeboxes will have been checked, the fair will have passed , the girls will have left school (having delivered the requested three trays of homemade cupcakes ) and we will have moved house!!

 

Life from the back of the pack. (moving on)

So after 10 years here in Edgware we are moving.

Keith has a new job in Cambridgeshire as minister of a village church and although we don't move till December we decided that it would be helpful to the girls to take them to see the house and to look round their school.

The highlight of the trip to the house was collecting apples from the tree in the garden!

The local primary school is about a 15 min walk which is great.

Our tour started in the Reception class where the girls discovered three guinea pigs, Annie didn't need to see anymore, so we left her in her class! and continued round the school.

Annie had a great time and was not impressed at having to leave!
So now we have 10 weeks to sort out the move, pack the house oh and finish the Christmas crafts currently under way!

So much to be thankful for...

Every now and again you listen to a sermon with the response ... I could do that! One such moment was when Gabriella Russo preached on being thankful.
She showed us her thankful jar, a simple way of remembering all that we have to be thankful for over the year. She set us a challenge - for a week we were to find one thing each day to thank God for.
We did this with the girls and I discovered two things :
Children are better at this than adults.
Some days it was hard to find one thing to be thankful for!
When I thought it through I concluded that this was because our selective memory forgets the good and dwells on the negatives of the days. Forcing myself to remember the good things was a great excercise so I decided that we would make ourselves a 'Thank you jar' and that I would try to regularly think of things to put in it. I was aware that I often start things and never finish especially if the are too structured so my hope was having the jar in view would remind me to write things down.

So I now have a jar full of things to thank God for, occasionally the girls have posted and I am looking forward to pulling them out at the end of the year and thanking God for his faithfulness to us this year.