Christmas is Jesus A to Z

Last year, as I was slightly dissatisfied with our Advent activities, I came up with the idea of doing an A to Z for Advent this year.  So I compiled notes throughout the year and looked over things I've done in the past and put together this year's Advent activities, or Jesus crafts as Aria calls them.  I called it, "Christmas is Jesus A to Z."  I don't claim to be any kind of expert and I don't plan to publish what we did, but what we did worked for us.  I think Aria had fun and learned more about Jesus and it kept our focus on Him this Christmas season.  I couldn't ask for much more. 

After changing my mind a zillion times about what word to use for each letter and what order I wanted to go in, I made a chart for Aria to glue up the alphabet cards as we did them.  Here is what our completed chart looks like:

We didn't go in alphabet order, but I tried to have kind of a through the Bible order.  Here is what we did:

B is for Beginning.  We read the Creation story and talked about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit being the only ones there at the beginning.  She really got it.  We made this craft, which is supposed to be the Trinity up above that created the earth below.

S is for Sin.  We read the story of Adam and Eve and talked about sin entering the world.  We talked about needing a Rescuer at that point.  We made a snake out of pipe cleaners, which will be in a picture shortly.

O is for Old Testament.  We looked through the Bible and discerned what part was the Old Testament and what part was the new testament.  I made a "book" out of a box and Aria glued pictures of Old Testament stories on the OT side of the box.

D is for David.  Instead of reading David and Goliath that she was familiar with, we focused on David being king and from Bethlehem.  She got the connection there.  Aria made a harp out of craft sticks and rubber bands.  Here is a picture of those three things:

I is for Isaiah.  We read about Isaiah's job as a prophet, to tell people that they needed a Rescuer and that He was coming soon.  She enjoyed the connection of the Scripture that prophesies about Jesus.  We made a megaphone to show that Isaiah told lots of people about Jesus coming.

R is for Rescuer.  We looked back at the story of Isaiah (in the Jesus Storybook Bible) and talked about why Jesus was coming to rescue us.  We played a game where we used Aria's swimming tube with a rope tied around it and "rescued" her dolls and her when they needed help in the "water."  I think it was a good connection point.

X is for eXcited.  There is a good story in the Jesus Storybook Bible about getting ready for the Messiah to come.  We read that and talked about other things we were excited for. 

This is a good time to mention that some of these took 30 minutes and some of them might have only taken 5.  It depended on our time for the day.  We also did some days with two letters.

N is for New Testament.  This was essentially the same as the OT craft.  We looked through the New Testament stories and Aria glued pictures of them on the NT side of the book.  I was blown away that she immediately recognized the picture of Saul/Paul.  She really knows a lot of Bible stories!

Now we move into the actual Christmas story.  I didn't plan for it to turn out like this, but we ended up making puppets for each of the characters of the story.  We did many, many, many puppet shows with them throughout those two weeks.  It totally boosted her knowledge of the Christmas story.  A video is coming...

Z is for Zechariah.  Aria enjoyed being this puppet when he could no longer talk!

E is for Elizabeth.  We used a puff ball for her baby and Aria had fun making the baby leap when Mary came to visit.

A is for Angel.  This was my favorite puppet with a gold sparkly dress and white feather wings.  We counted, angels appear in the Christmas story 7 times.

M is for Mary.  Jesus' mom on earth.  Enough said.

J is for Joseph.  Jesus' earthly father.

T is for Trip.  We looked at a map of Nazareth to Bethlehem and talked about how far it was.  It is about the distance from where we live to my hometown, so that was an easy way to explain it to Aria.  And of course we did puppet shows.

K is for King.  I struggled with not doing J is for Jesus, but decided I needed Joseph in the story and we could talk about Jesus as the King of Kings.  We made a baby Jesus puppet with a crown.  We talked about leaving Heaven and becoming poor.

Here is our puppet show from our Christmas celebration as a family of three using all the above characters (warning: quite long):

U is for Under the star.  This was for the star the shepherds saw above Bethlehem when Jesus was born.  We made a big, shiny star.

L is for Light of the world.  We added a little key chain light to the tail of our star and hung it above our nativity scene and shined it on Jesus.  We also started learning John 8:12, "Jesus said, 'I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life."

It is kind of hard to see the light at the bottom and I will explain the cross in a minute, but this was a hit addition to our nativity this year.

P is for Pray.  Now we moved into Jesus' time on earth and our relationship with Him.  He taught us how to pray.  We spent some time praying.

Q is for Quote.  Another way we can talk to Jesus is to read the Bible and memorize the verses.  We continued practicing our new verse and reviewed several of the ones we already know.

W is for Worship.  We talked about how it feels good to get compliments and that God wants us to praise Him.  We talked about what we could praise Him for and then we sang worship songs.  This was a day where I was struggling with some stress and it felt so good to worship my King and give it all to Him.  Amazing how God works in our lives.

F is for Friends.  Jesus wants us to love God and love others (that is our preschool verse).  So, we loved on a few of Aria's friends and made them some homemade play doh and delivered it as Christmas presents.

C is for Cross.  The whole reason Jesus came to earth as a baby at Christmastime was to die on the cross for our sins.  I hit this hard this year and I think Aria understood.  We made a cross and used alpha beads to put Jesus' name on it.  When we were trying to find a place for it, we thought of attaching it to the star above the nativity to remember that was why He came. (See star picture)

V is for Victory.  We read the story of Jesus' resurrection and talked about how he won over death.  We had to explain what victory was by comparing it to playing a game and winning.  We did this letter on the same day as...

H is for Heaven.  We read the Jesus Storybook Bible story of Revelation and John's description of Heaven.  Then we drew pictures of what we thought Heaven would look like.  We talked about going there someday.  This was done as a family and was really fun!

Y is for You.  We reviewed all the things we did for these A to Z activities and read the very last part of the JSB where it says that "it is your story, too."  We talked about how much Jesus loves each of us and did all of those things in the Bible because of His love for us.

G is for Give.  This was our family of three Christmas celebration day.  We incorporated this into our celebration which included a puppet show, opening a present from God that was baby Jesus and a cross, and picking out presents for Jesus from the Samaritan's Purse catalog.  We also give each other three gifts at Christmas, which match the wise men gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 

And that is the end of our "Christmas is Jesus A to Z."  It was excellent for where we were at this year.  I would totally do it all again, but then again I never do the exact same thing when it comes to special learning and activities.