Preparing for Advent: Jesse Tree

A few years ago I introduced the Jesse Tree to my older girls as a new Advent tradition.  Each night from the first Sunday in Advent up until Christmas Eve we gather in the dining room.  We light our Advent wreath and since a verse from O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.  That is followed by us praying a decade of the rosary using the joyful mysteries and then we round it out with our Jesse Tree.

The first year we did the Jesse Tree I was all over the the place with it.  I had found some free printable ornaments which I liked, but I didn't like that there were only twenty four ornaments.  That same year, Holy Heroes released their Jesse Tree DVD.  Midway through Advent I abandoned the Jesse Tree ornaments we started with and switched over to the Holy Heroes one because I liked the ornaments better, there were enough for every day of Advent, they included the O Antiphons and best of all, they had videos for each ornament where my girls could listen to the story and see either a felt story board display of the story or something similar such as the Holy Heroes Adventure guides acting out a scene from the bible.

Last year I wasn't sure if we were going to watch the videos.  Instead, I was going to have Madeline read the corresponding stories from the picture biblewe use for our Jesus Tree during Lent, but the girls insisted.  The Holy Heroes Jesse Tree has become family tradition.

In all honesty I was going to wait another week or two to write about the Jesse Tree, but Holy Heroes sent out an email today saying that their Jesse Tree DVD is their Deal of the Day.  So you might want to head over there and check out their sale price if you're interested in this Jesse Tree.

The DVD includes the file for the printable ornaments.  I tinker with the size a bit and make ours about half the size they have on the PDF document.  I then take our shiny green foil wrap and cut out a tree for each of the girls.  They hang their trees on their bedroom doors and tape a new ornament on it each night.  They really enjoy coloring in their ornaments by candle light each night during Advent.  I hope when they are grown that they have fond memories of celebrating Advent.

In Advent, Christmas Epiphany in the Domestic Churchthey also have a nice Jesse Tree.  With this one you can print out and color the symbols for each of the readings and read the corresponding story from the bible, or if you have the time, you could match up the stories with those in a children's bible.  They have some great ideas for different ways of setting up a Jesse Tree.  In addition to the Jesse Tree, Advent, Christmas and Epiphany in the Domestic Church has a lot of other great ideas for celebrating these seasons with your children.

If you want to do a Jesse Tree but aren't sure you can commit to doing a story/ornament each day, you might like the St. Joseph Picture Book Celebrating Advent with the Jesse Tree.This book has eleven Jesse Tree readings each with a corresponding full color illustration.  The readings are divided among the four weeks of Advent with the first three weeks having three readings and the fourth week having two. 

Preparing for Advent: A Catholic Family Advent

Advent can be a hectic time of year.  You're busy doing a million and one things trying to get ready for Christmas.  It's important to take a break from the hustle and bustle and make yourself and your family slow down here and there and take a few moments to focus on what Advent really is [a time to prepare your heart and mind for the splendor of the miracle that is Christmas].

Susan Hines-Brigger's A Catholic Family AdventPrayers and Activities is a nice book to help you focus yourself and your family on Advent and preparing for Christmas.  Unlike some daily Advent books, this is one that can be used year after year since it offers an entry for the maximum number of days you can have in any given Advent season.  For each day this book offers an entry with the following categories: scripture, reflection, talk together, prayer and activity.  The entries can be read over the course of a couple of minutes so even the most impatient children should be able to sit still and listen and discuss the topic for the day.  The author suggests you read through the book ahead of time and check out the suggested activities so you can make changes to fit your lifestyle where necessary.  For the most part, the reflections seem like that are primarily geared to the adults, but the other categories are all perfectly suited for the whole family.

The book has beautiful full color pages that both children and adults will find attractive.  I'm so used to white pages with black type that I was pleasantly surprised to see the colorful pages.

I like how the book essentially brings Advent to you.  If your family is busy and you think there simply isn't any way you'll have time to celebrate every day of Advent, I'd suggest you take a look at this book.

I was provided with a review copy of A Catholic Family Advent by the publisher, Franciscan Media, in exchange for my honest review.  You can purchase this book here.

Preparing for Advent: A series to help you get ready

Year after year I feel like Advent sneaks up on me before I have enough time to prepare for it.  I assume I'm not the only one who realizes a day or two before Advent begins that I didn't order the books I wanted for myself or my children.  So in an effort to be better prepared myself and to hopefully help some of you plan for this season, I have decided to do a series entitled Preparing for Advent.

I haven't decided everything that will be included in this series, but there will be a number of books aimed at helping you get ready for Advent and Christmas.  I'll share reviews of some of the Advent and Christmas books that are in my review pile as well as some of my favorite story books to read to the girls and my religious education class.

I know it's October and it may seem like I'm super early with these posts, but I think it helps to have some lead time in case you decide you want to order a book or look for it at a local bookstore.  I've had more than a few instances where I saw a book that was perfect for celebrating a particular feast day the day of and found myself wishing I had known about it a week or so beforehand.

Book Review: Imagination Station Battle for Cannibal Island

My seven year old daughter and I recently had the opportunity to one of the latest books in the Imagination Station series, Battle for Cannibal Island.This was my seven year old's first experience with an Imagination Station book and she really enjoyed it.

In Battle for Cannibal Island Beth and Patrick are transported on to a ship off the coast of Fiji in the 1850s.  In this adventure, which kept my daughter wanting to know what would happen next, the main characters meet missionary James Calvert and learn about how he worked to convert the cannibals on the island.

In previous reviews I had likened the Imagination Station to the Magic Tree House series.  My older daughter read many of those books independently and also likened this series to that one.  I recently read a Magic Tree House book with my seven year old and have come to the conclusion that while there are some similarities between the two, that it is unfair for me to compare the Imagination Station series to Magic Tree House.  I have come to the conclusion that the Imagination Station series has better writing hands down.  While you'll find sentence fragments passed off as sentences throughout the Magic Tree House books you won't find incomplete sentences in the Imagination Station books.  As a parent who firmly believes that children who read good quality writing will become good quality writers themselves I feel good about sending my child off to read with a book from this series.  As for the other series, I have decided that we won't be reading them anymore since the writer and her editors don't know how to formulate complete sentences.

One thing that I really appreciate about the Imagination Station series is the way it weaves solid Christian values into the story line.

If you are looking for a good series of books for children who are just staring out with chapter books, then this just might be the series for you.  After reading this book my daughter was asking me if we had anymore books like this that she could read.

I was provided with a review copy of this book by the publisher, Tyndale, in exchange for my honest review.

Check back next week when I review the next book in this series for a chance to win a copy of this and one other Imagination station book!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} Look who's walking!

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life...

{pretty}

I love how happy and sunny Katie looks in this picture.  I took it on her last day of being less than a year old.  I love every day with this pretty little girl and am so richly blessed to have her.

 {happy}

Katie likes Cheerios and her big sister "Maa" so much that she's happy to stagger walk across the kitchen to get to them.

{funny}

Look at the look of concern on Katie's face as she sets off across the kitchen [to get the aforementioned Cheerios and big sister].

{real}

I'm pretty certain that they think she's a pet.  They shake the box of Cheerios at her like they're treats and then they have her eating them out of their hands.  Katie doesn't mind and the big sisters love it.  Of course, there are times when they fight over who gets to feed her.

Visit Like Mother, Like Daughter for more pictures of contentment.

Quick Takes Volume 48

~1~

Katie turned one on Tuesday.  She absolutely loved having people wish her a happy birthday and this girl really likes icing.

~2~

I've spent most of today baking cakes and cupcakes.  I feel like I've had enough of cake this week.  Monday I baked a cake for Katie's little party, Tuesday I baked cupcakes to bring over to the parish office for Katie's birthday buddies, and today I've baked one giant cupcake and thirty six regular cupcakes.  I'm not sure why I made the cupcakes since my mom is bringing a birthday cake up to my house tomorrow for my brother.

~3~

I survived another one of Bryan's business trips.  Tuesday night into Wednesday Katie didn't sleep very well.  I was exhausted by the time Bryan got home very late on Wednesday.

~4~

I feel like I have an incredibly long to do list for Katie's birthday party tomorrow, but I'm chipping away at it.

~5~

Madeline's hatred of Math is making me begin to hate Math, too.  I've spent more hours this week going over decimals with Madeline than I care to remember.  

~6~

I discovered that Katie sleeps much better when she is wearing snuggly warm long sleeved pajamas.  As you can probably imagine, I made it my mission to buy her a few new sets of warm fleece pjs.  If a warm baby equals a sleeping baby then I'm all for it.

~7~

I got to help out with a craft in Ellie's class today.  So now I have a new craft idea that I look forward to trying out with my CCD kids.

Katie is One!

It's incredibly hard for me to believe that an entire year has passed between Katie's arrival and today.  I can tell you it honestly doesn't feel like it has been a year, but at the same time it feels like Katie has been with us forever.

I think the birthday girl had a pretty good day today.  She spent a lot of time playing and working on her newly minted walking skill.  She was so excited about her big day that she decided that afternoon naps were for the birds.  Poor exhausted mommy was not thrilled about that little development.

Katie and I did a little bit of shopping in the morning for party supplies for the party we're having for her this Saturday.  We decided to go with Hello Kitty as her party theme because it was big sister approved and seemed quite fitting for the cute little one who we call Kitty Katkins.

This afternoon Katie and I visited the parish office so she could say hello to her birthday buddies.  We brought some cupcakes with pink icing to commemorate the big day.

Right around the time Katie decided that napping wasn't on her birthday to-do list, my mom and dad arrived.  My parents came up and had dinner with me and the girls and we had a little party with cake and a few presents before it was time to shuttle Madeline off to soccer practice.

Katie indulged in her fist ever slice of pizza.  She kept grabbing at my slice so I decided to dice up half a piece and see if she would eat it.  She gobbled it up!  She's clearly her mother's daughter!

Katie dug right into her cake.  She happily grabbed at the icing on the cake.  I had to pull her away from it after a bit because I was afraid she was going to give herself a belly ache from eating too much of the very sweet buttercream.

She wasn't very interested in opening presents but she loved playing with the envelopes for the cards.  She has a thing for paper these days--particularly the one dollar bills her MomMom and PopPop like to give her.

Later in the evening Katie got to FaceTime with her daddy.  Unfortunately Bryan had to travel to San Antonio this week.  We're looking forward to having him home with us late tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Kitty Katkins!  We love you so much!