As I mentioned yesterday there are just three months until Christmas! Plenty of time for the children to make colorful paper chains for the family tree or perhaps to drape around frosty windows ... or maybe for a special child-size tree all their own.
Paper chains are cheerful, old-fashioned decorations, and this year we're building a special project around them - a decorated box in which to store our daily blessings and prayers. By Christmastime, the box will be full of slips of paper ready to turn into colorful chains.
Just after Advent, we'll set up a small special tree - filled with our joyful thanksgiving. It will be a tree for the baby Jesus - for it is through Him which all good things come. We'll place it near the children's creche - ours is an entirely child-friendly one meant to be touched and even played with (sturdy wooden manger, soft dolls). Naturally there will be a basket of nativity books close at hand. But I'm getting ahead of myself!
Back to the craft store - where it was that the box first caught my eye. The boys helped me choose the other shapes and the colors, and today we set to work:
Materials: hinged wooden box, small wooden stars, thin wooden heart shape, several colors of acrylic paint, several sheets of colorful construction paper
Now, obviously, the box could be decorated in any style that suits your fancy. Here's how ours turned out:
The hearts were a bit fussy but the colors represent each member of our family. (And friends and family might be able to guess whose color is whose!)
Here is the box opened up. We cut the construction paper into small slips that will fit inside the box. Each night at supper, we'll talk about what we're grateful for and write our blessings on the bits of paper ...
If we have someone or something special to pray for, that will be written on a white slip. All the slips will be kept in our special box until Christmastime. Then, strung together, they will make a pretty decoration for our tree, a simple but tangible expression of our grateful hearts.
Next month we'll also make small wooden frame ornaments for the blessings tree - to hold pictures of loved ones - family and friends, Our Lord, Our Blessed Mother, and favorite patron saints.
This was an easy and enjoyable craft - one that will bring our faith into focus each night, as well as throughout the Christmas season. Last night at supper, we wrote out our first slip and I explained to the boys about the small special tree for December. They were very excited! Such a tree would also make a thoughtful gift for an elderly relative. Filled with happy pictures and colorful bits of paper, it would surely brighten anyone's Christmas season!
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