The Mom Crowd

It is so incredibly easy to get bogged down in the traditions of Christmas, all the shopping, decorating, festivities, etc, and to forget the real meaning behind the holiday.  While I’m not a Santa-fanatic, we still get gifts from Santa for our kids and let them participate in the “fun” of it, however our focus on Christmas is Christ.

I was thinking of ways to keep my children’s focus on Jesus instead of the presents and Santa and came up with a few ideas I thought I’d share.

Teach about Jesus year-round and not just at Christmas - The more your children hear about the goodness and mercies of Jesus all year, the easier it will be for them to understand the importance of Christmas.  Daily read books and the Bible with them and encourage them to pray.  Amanda gave some great tips on teaching your children to pray yesterday.

Remember to put YOUR focus on Christ and not the traditions – Your children will see what you put the most importance on and will follow your lead.  If you are more worried about presents, they will be too.  The same goes for Santa Claus, if your family chooses to participate in that tradition.  If you are constantly saying “Santa is coming”, your children will get the impression that Santa is the reason for Christmas.

Encourage your children to have the giving spirit - Remind your children that we give gifts on Christmas in honor of Jesus.  Just like the three wise kings who brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus to show Him their love, we give gifts to those we love.  Make it more about the giving than the getting.  A great way to teach this is to have your child pick something out for another child who will be receiving gifts as part of a ministry.  Your child will get to learn that giving makes them happier than getting.

Read your children the Christmas Story – Reading straight from the Bible is always a good thing with your kids!  You are speaking truth and love over them when you do and you are ministering and preparing their hearts for their future relationship with Jesus.  Matthew 1:18-2:23 and Luke 1:26-38 and Luke 2:1-29 tell the story.  There are also many books that are more on toddler and preschooler levels that tell the story without all the “grown-up” and potentially scary details.  We currently have The Story of Christmas by Patricia A. Pingry and our kids love it.

Decorate your house with more Christian items than “holiday” decorations – We currently have two nativity sets out that our children love to look at and talk about.  We also made a construction paper nativity that takes up an entire wall.  I did the major cutting out and my 4 year old drew faces on Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and the Angel.  He also glued the pieces together and helped me hang everything on the wall.  We also have the scriptures from Luke telling of the birth of Jesus printed out and on the wall above the nativity.  Having a toy nativity, like the one Fisher-Price has in their Little People brand, is a great way for kids to learn and interact with the story.

How do you keep the Christ in Christmas with your kids?

Photo Courtesy of Loci Lenar

Teaching your child how to pray is one of the best life skills you can teach them. I realized a few months after my daughter could start putting sentences together that I could teach her how to pray. She also goes to a Mother’s Day Out program at my church and she prays at school. It occurred to me that she didn’t pray at home.

I believe prayer is real and God hears our hearts. He wants to speak to us. I want to teach my daughter that she can always pray and that God is accessible anywhere. This is a life lesson that I don’t want to fall short on teaching her. I am also excited that later on I get to teach her how to hear God too.

This fall we began praying with my daughter as part of the bedtime process. Here are some tips that can help you with praying with your children.

1. Keep the prayer simple. We pray the same prayer every night. We sit together, close our eyes, and each of us clasps our own hands together and pray. This is what we pray, “Dear Jesus, thank you for today. Bless Mommy, Daddy, and Brother. Help me sleep well. I love you, Jesus. Amen!” It is fun, because sometimes my daughter will include others in the list of blessing. She doesn’t always say the whole thing out loud, but we ask her to say “I love you, Jesus. Amen.” We made up this prayer, but you can make up your own too! Just keep it simple.

2. Sing a song. I have some friends that know prayers that are like songs. It is is seriously adorable to hear them sing their prayers. You can sing ‘Jesus Loves Me’ or other songs like this one.

God is Great
- With these additional lines, it is sung to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star“:

God is good and God is great.
And we thank him for our food.

By his hands we all are fed.
Thank you, Lord, for our daily bread.
God is great and God is good,
And we thank him for our food.

3. Make a routine. The best way to remember to pray with your kids is to include it in a routine every day. It can be done before they eat a meal or in a bedtime routine.  Here is an example of a meal time prayer:

Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you God for everything.

4. Pray for someone when they get an Ouchie. You can teach your child how to pray for their friends when their friend gets hurt or doesn’t feel well. I have seen a friend’s child do this and it warms my heart to see that child learn compassion. The prayer can be something as simple as “Dear Jesus, please heal my friend. Amen.”

5. Be an example. Pray in front of your kids! Let them see you reading your Bible and praying. Include everyone in the family when praying with your child. In our bedtime routine I may read the bedtime book, but Daddy always comes in for the prayer time. We all pray out loud together. You can also model it by having Daddy pray for Mommy or the other way around. They may not seem that they are paying attention, but it certainly sets the tone that prayer is a normal part of life.

How have you taught your children to pray? Do you have it in a routine? What sing-songy prayer do your children pray?

During Advent, we often hear the word peace:  “Peace on earth, good will toward men.”  “Sleep in heavenly peace.”  “His law is love and His gospel is peace.”  Isaiah 9:6 says, “For a child is born to us, a son given to us.  And the government will rest on his shoulders.  These will be his royal titles: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  Just by being born, Jesus brought peace to our broken planet.  Hallelujah!

Someone asked me yesterday if I thought “peace on earth, and good will toward men” (on a global scale) was really possible for us to achieve.  I pondered it for awhile and concluded that, no, it isn’t.  Man is fallen.  We are sinful beings.  We can strive for it, but it won’t be here with any form of longevity until Jesus returns.   We discussed how nations are at war, and nations are made up of broken communities formed by sinful people.  Relationships are constantly being torn apart.  The brokenness we have with others is what prevents peace from existing.

So I turned inward.  I started examining my relationships and how Christmas is as good a time as any to get going on some reconciliation.  I know I can’t tackle the entire mountain of brokenness in my life at once, but I can start on one piece.  God has been speaking to my heart this past week that the time has come to approach a friend with whom I have not been spending time.  We had a disagreement in the spring, and our friendship has suffered as a result.  Though we were both in the wrong, I have been closed off in my heart towards her, and the Holy Spirit was nudging me to stop.  I prayed in faith that God would help me approach my friend when the time was right.  For me, making an effort to connect one-on-one again would be an act of faith that God could restore what was broken.

On Sunday morning, I acted vulnerably and asked my friend if she would be interested in hanging out with me.  (I know this sounds very basic to a friendship, but we haven’t done this for 8 months!)  She responded very happily and readily.  I don’t know if the Spirit will lead me to share what prompted my actions (I’m fine either way), but I am glad that this Advent, I will be celebrating Christ’s birth with a very personal thankfulness for His supreme example of reconciliation. 

I hope that you, too, will experience Advent in a personal, redemptive way this year.  Have a wonderful week.

Don’t forget to add your childrens’ teachers to your Christmas list this year! McKenna originally published this list last December. A few friends who are teachers told me that they do not like teacher themed ornaments. Also chocolate or coffee may not be a good idea, because you don’t know their taste or they be diabetic. Gift cards may be the best gift. You can get them gift cards to Lakeshore for school supplies, to Target, or Barnes and Nobles. What are you planning on getting your teachers this year?

Original post by McKenna:

There are some very special people on our Christmas shopping list that are some of the hardest people to shop for!  Around this time every year, I panic trying to think of a good gift for my daughter’s teachers and developmental therapists.  Here are some gift ideas I have come up with and I’d love to know what you will be giving to your child’s teachers for Christmas.

Personalized Stationary or School Supplies

• Note cards, notepads,  and pens that are either personalized with your teachers’ name on it or hand decorated by your child.  Teachers also LOVE sharpies, apparently, as several of my teacher friends have said they get really excited when they buy new sharpie pens.  Who knew?

Personalized Aprons

• A friend of mine has a monogram machine and suggested purchasing inexpensive aprons and monogramming the teachers’ initials on them.

Group Gift

• Get together with some of the other parents from your child’s class to purchase a more expensive gift together.  You can get your teacher a spa gift certificate or a gift certificate to a teacher supply store!

Photo Memories

• If you’re handy with a camera, take pictures of the children in the class, arrange the pictures in an album,  and have each child sign their name by their picture.

A Special Ornament

• Have your child decorate or pick out a special ornament for their teacher.  You can try to find something that reflects on the current school year memories.

Calendar

• My daughter was in our local Down Syndrome Association’s yearly calendar, so all of her teachers and developmental therapists received calendars that year as gifts!  They all loved that her sweet face was Miss November (and all the other precious faces in the calendar) and my purchases supported our local Down Syndrome Association!

Pay Close Attention

• Try to find out if your child’s teacher has a hobby or collects anything.  Does she wear a charm bracelet?  Does she have Willow Tree figurines on her bookshelves?  Does she have a collection of kitty cat magnets on her filing cabinet doors?  By paying attention to those subtle details, you just may find the perfect gift idea that is uniquely special for your child’s teacher!

What about you?  What are you giving your child’s teachers this year?  What special gifts have you given them in past Christmases?

When we moved to England 3 months ago we left our Christmas decorations behind.  We are only planning on being here for 4 years and we live in a small flat with little storage.  We only brought the necessities and Christmas decorations didn’t make the cut.  As Christmas was approaching the kids started talking about getting a Christmas tree and hanging up stockings.  My husband is in graduate school and we are living on a pretty tight budget. I didn’t want to spend very much money on buying a tree, ornaments, stockings, lights etc.  We wanted to keep with tradition and make Christmas in England feel like “home” but spend as little as possible.

I asked my mom if she could find the storage box and send our stockings to us from the US.  She didn’t want to mess with digging through our Christmas boxes so she generoulsy ordered some stockings online for the kids and sent them to us.  We bought the cheapest reusable Christmas at a store (costing $11!) so we can use it for the next 4 years, one strand of twinkle lights, and 2 boxes of candy canes.  Everything else we had at home.

Here is what we have on our tree:

• Paper chains
• Homemade salt dough ornaments painted by the kids
• Candy Canes
• Sparkley red ribbon left behind from the previous flat-renters
• Twinkle lights
• Stringed popcorn (still in the process)

I like it when my tree looks pretty with full lights and is decorated with my pretty ornaments. But I gotta tell you, our kids LOVE their home decorated tree! They are so proud that everything on it is something they helped make or find in our flat to decorate it with. Our tree has lights on the top half and has ornaments unevenly distributed everywhere.  The paper chains are not cut evenly either.  But it has lots of flair and personality and it brings a smile to my face when I look at it.  We all worked hard to put our tree together and I love that they love it.

We spent very little money–especially since we can reuse everything except the popcorn and maybe the candy canes.  I have found that I don’t need fancy decorations for Christmas to feel like Christmas.  Spending time with my family and remembering why we celebrate Christmas in the first place has been a great reminder for me this year.

What fun things to you put on your tree?  Favorite homemade decorations?  Best Christmas budget ideas?