Celebrating Advent - - with a Toddler

Neither Aaron nor I celebrated Advent growing up.  But we love the idea of using the month of December to prepare for the birth of Jesus and for His Second Coming!  We would really like to celebrate Advent with our kids in order to keep our family's focus during the holidays on Christ.  So we found some very simple things to do with Davis this year:   

1. Each night we read one of the stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible; the order of the stories was outlined here so we just read 1 story every night, starting December 1.  Was he old enough to understand the Bible stories?!  Probably not!  The Jesus Storybook Bible is a fantastic Bible for little ones (and adults too!) and it does a great job of explaining how the Old Testament stories relate to Jesus and the Gospel, which is what we love about it! But the stories are a little longer for a very busy 18 month old. We usually read to Davis while he was eating dinner or we'd start with him on our laps & he quickly migrated to the floor to play while we read. Either way, it was a good refresher for Aaron & me and he listened to some of the stories! 

2. Then we gave him an "ornament" to color that went along with the Bible story we'd read that evening. Davis is kind of new at the coloring thing, so some nights he wanted to do more eating of the crayons than actual coloring... but by the end of the 25 days, he seemed to really be getting the hang of it! When we let him get down from the table & handed him his ornament, he would excitedly walk into the living room & tape the ornament to his Advent Tree.  It was pretty adorable to watch!  A couple times he wanted to take the ornaments back off the tree, but we were surprised at how much he left it alone! PS. The tree was just made out of green bulletin board paper & I had it laminated for $1 at EduPlay.

His Advent Tree on Christmas Eve!

I am really excited to continue this tradition as our kids grow up. I thought these ideas (all taken from this website!) may be helpful for you, as well, if you're looking for kid-friendly Advent ideas for next year.