In 2009, the Friend magazine had a great advent calendar (pages 24-25).
Every day in December, we learned how kids in different countries celebrate Christmas. We read one each day and tried to do the same activities if we could. I have saved this file and we pull it out each year. I didn’t take many pictures, but here are a few we did…
- Kids in Mexico make farolitos and this is our version.
- We used vellum and the kids used crayons to draw Christmasy things.
- Tape them into a tube that just fits around a little pint jar
- Stick a little tea light candle in and wah-lah. They look really cool when the lights are turned off.
- Kids in Holland eat banketletter
- make a cake in the shape of the first letter in your family's last name.
- This is the best I could do for a K-shaped cake. Yummy no matter what letter!
We also had Christmas cake and strawberries like the kids in Japan.
We hung a Coleman lantern on our front porch because that's the closest we could come to putting lighted candles on our roofs like the kids in India.
My 5-year-old loved leaving his shoes by the fireplace and waking up to them filled with candy like the kids in Germany.
We also made a batch of rice pudding (recipe HERE) that we tried like the kids in Norway. We hid a nut in one of the bowls and whoever found it in their pudding got a special prize.
Print out your Christmas Around the World Advent HERE!
What a fun mom you are! I've always loved Christmas Around the World. Those lanterns are pretty awesome! Don't laugh at me but now I'm going to have to google "velum"!
ReplyDeleteOh how fun! My kids love learning about different cultures. I'll have to look over this calendar- thank you. :)
ReplyDeleteJen
Vellum :) It's a semi-transparent scrapbook-type paper. You can find it in any store that sells scrapbook paper!
ReplyDeleteLove this. Wish I would have found it 7 days ago.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a fabulous idea! I love how you could use it as an advent or just for celebration ideas! I'd like to link to this post on Dec. 24th--on Saturdays I share preschool resources from around the internet, and this just seemed appropriate for Christmas Eve! Let me know if that's a problem!
ReplyDeleteCarla @ Whole Child Creative Curriculum
I thought the link was old so I was going to forget it and started looking elsewhere. However God brought me to the link and I'm sharing it!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lds.org/friend/2009/12/christmas-around-the-world?lang=eng
I fixed the link. Thank you so much for letting me know! Enjoy this fun tradition!!
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