Celebrate the Advent Season as a Family

There are so many ideas of how to celebrate Jesus' birth!  No matter what the ages of your children, I believe they enjoy the traditions your family chooses to implement, especially during Christmas time.  There are crafts, readings & books, recipes, calendars, and more!  In fact, many more that you'll have time to do, especially since it's already the middle of December.  Here are a few sites with many great ideas:

Confessions of a Homeschooler has many ideas for preschool age children.  Many hands-on ideas, many printables and many links to other sites.  Check out her Advent ideas.

Have you ever heard of a Jesse Tree?  It's a way of looking at all the Old Testament events that lead up to the Birth of Jesus.  There are readings for every day from Scripture along with an ornament to put on your special tree~the Jesse Tree.  Here are a few sites that offer Jesse Tree printables and info:  this sight, eriercd. gives the Scripture for each day and an ornament to print, cut out, and place on your Jesse tree; one of my favorite sites: A Holy Experience (a great site you'll just LOVE for your own personal growth, but there's a download on the side for a Jesse Tree packet she wrote)

Pre Kinders is a site that has all kinds of activities to print out and put together that really works on a number of skills, like sorting, patterns, recognition of letter/numbers.  There are several that work for Christmas


I haven't looked at Activity village too much, but there are a number of crafts, coloring pages and fun activities there.

This site has some great Christian printables, letter work, coloring pages, and Christmas Ideas as well as crafts for your preschoolers or for a group of kids.  There are some neat little books that you can print--one page long, that you fold up and it's a booklet for them to read.  There are a few that are just for Christmas. Going here will bring you to several Christmas mini-books and coloring pages that are wonderful! Another idea is to talk through the names of Jesus, using these ornaments

Making Friends is a fantastic site for all kinds of things, but this link will take you to printable paper dolls for the Nativity.  What fun! There are all kinds of other paper dolls you can print, as well as activities for Christmas and any other holiday.

Here's a site that shares many advent links: Teaching Mom
DTLK has a number of kids stuff, but here's the link to the snowman soup poem from today, as well as other gifts kids can make.

Enjoy your Christmas and the Celebration of the Birth of our Savior!

Do you ever wonder what to do with these children?

I often get so busy with my own tasks, that I put aside spending time with my own children. I get wrapped up in taking care of the house, laundry, feeding kids, feeding the baby...that I forget about my middle child. I spend time doing school with the oldest, and I forget that my middle 3.5 year old needs attention and learning time, too. So, I've been searching for ideas of what to do with her. We read lots of books together, go for bike rides and walks together, but in this area of schooling, I admit to not getting too far. She's not ready for writing letters or workbooks and she's just beginning to enjoy coloring. The sites that I've found give great ideas for this age-group of 2-4 + year olds that have many hands-on activities and ideas. Many of this involve mess/clean-up or preparation or some small purchasing (which, I admit, turns me off). However, you may pick and choose what fits you and your children.

Totally Tots is a site that gives a variety of ideas on developing fine motor skills, sorting, grouping items, gives Christian resources/printables, and all sorts of good stuff. Here's another of her sites that gives specific on "Tot Boxes". Here's one of her posts on working with numbers with your preschooler--no writing, but GREAT ideas!

More Chore Charts

Here are the chore charts we will be using on Tuesday. Each mom will get one of these, plus some magnetic "stickers" to place accordingly when the child has done the job. I'll be posting the stickers later.

Chore Charts

Routine! Back in the swing of things! Some kids in school...gets dark earlier, change of the seasons. So I thought we'd talk about chores in the home for our children as we focus on routine, and I wanted to share some sites and printables with you all.

Here's a cool chart that you can customize the design, the chores, the colors, and more!

Focus on the Family shares an article about what ages should do a variety of chores, beginning with age 2. I'll be sharing some of this info at our first meeting. Did you know that at 2-3 years old a child should begin to make his bed, pick up toys, dust furniture and put dirty laundry in the basket?

In all my personal searching on this topic and on training my children, I came across this site & book. Now, this site is directed toward homeschooling, but there's just a TON that is applicable to all parents. This book is on my next to buy list. I've come to realize that having my children do chores isn't just they have something productive to do. It's not training them to clean up after themselves so that I don't have to. It's more than just teaching them to work hard and be responsible. In all of these things, we are training our children in the area of character! When we teach them to clean up after themselves, we are instilling the habit & character of neatness. When I make my children wash their hands, I want her to develop the habit of cleanliness. I want my children to get into such a habit of doing these good things, that they do them without me needing to tell them to do it each time. At the end of this process, the child will find it easier to do the right thing because it will be what she does without thinking about it. To do the wrong thing will require MORE thinking.

{added later} I wanted to share some more links on the topic of character training. Here's a link to a list of character traits, definitions and Scripture to go with them. It's from A Heart of Wisdom.

I've recently become a fan of the TLC show 20 and Counting, about the Duggar family. Here's their list of Character traits.

Come Tuesday morning to find out more on this topic and catch up on everybody's summer activities!

MOMS 2010-2011 Year

Whew! The summer flew by! I don't know about you, but we spent MANY days cooling off at Lake Michigan, enjoying our neck of the woods. The Steering Team has spent many hours this summer planning our next year of MOMS, and are so excited about this journey ahead of us! Speaker requests are being sent out and craft projects are in the works. Here's our schedule:


September 14, 28

October 12,26

November 9, 23

December 14

January 11, 25

February 8, 22

March 8, 22

April 12, 26

May 10

The Steering Team will be reading the book "The Bathtub is Overflowing but I Feel Drained...How to Defeat Mommy Stress" by Lysa TerKeurst. Debbie will also be using this book in her Mom Mentor Moments once a month. Feel free to buy this book as well as it's a great book on parenting and managing a home and a life. I found several cheap copies on Amazon's used book list, and it's also found at many other Christian book stores.

We are looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones in just a few short weeks! Please invite friends to come and let them know it's always free to check us out a few weeks.

The Steering Team

Thank you to the Fathers that make us Mothers...

Happy Father's Day to all the dads that help make MOMS happen...Thank you dads for the time we can spend at home with our children--whether we work part time or full time, in the home or out of the home--we are so grateful to be able to come to MOMS meetings. We are better moms for it and better wives. When we can invest in ourselves, our roles, and our friendships, we grow as a person. Thank you.

Teaching Our Children to Honor their Father

Father’s Day was approaching and we had gathered with several families we know well to celebrate the fathers together. We’ve had a long standing tradition to take a few minutes and go around the room and let each child tell something they appreciate about their Daddy.

But this time my stomach was in knots. My friend and her husband had had a really difficult year. He’d started his own business and it had been all consuming. He had seen very little of his kids or his wife. She had 4 small children and it had been really hard on her. Not much help, or appreciation or affirmation or support. It would have been easy for her to be critical of the “cost” of this venture in her life as well as in the family life as a whole. It had been tough on their marriage and on their children.

When her four year olds’ turn came to tell something he liked about his Daddy I was fearful about what he might say. I was in for a delightful surprise as he exclaimed in his little four year-old boy voice,

“I appreciates my Daddy because he works so hard so we can have food and clothes and a house and he doesn’t get to see me very much which makes him sad because he wants to play with me but he has to work hard right now so he can take care of me. “

Where did this come from? I wondered. It came from a wise woman who made a decision day in and day out over a long period to build up her husband in front of her kids. Sure she could have been bitter, complained, said subtle things to her children to communicate her disappointment with her husband. Even though she had some legitimate gripes she chose instead to give them an appreciation for their Dad. And in the long run her attitude will reap great rewards.

Begin a tradition this Father’s day of having your kids and grandkids share specific things they appreciate about these important men in their lives.

found at: momlifetoday.com

What we do...

MOMS love time to mingle, talk, and catch up with friends when they come to M.O.M.S. Our ladies repeatedly claim that socialization is their favorite part of our meetings! Mothering can be exhausting and lonely, and we want to offer a place to relax, regroup, and re-energize.

Children are lovingly cared for by other ladies, given lessons, crafts, snacks and playtime with other children their age while moms make their way downstairs for brunch. After brunch, we have ice breakers and announcements. We also have crafts or special speakers each meeting. This past year, we have had crafts such as

• Picture Tiles: each mom had a picture they previously submitted printed onto tissue paper and mod-podged onto a tile and decorated
• Cookie Decorating: using various frosting decorating tips on holiday-shaped sugar cookies
• Glass Snowmen: paint glass jar to look like a snowman, place twinkle lights inside and give it a hat
• Crocheting: learn steps to simple crocheting and create a hand towel
• Bag Decorating: use a Cri-cut to cut out shapes from fabric and iron onto a fabric tote-bag

We also had speakers speaking on topics such as:

• Gift giving and gift decorating
• Fitness and nutrition
• How to parent your child according to his or her personality
• Making your time with your children special and meaningful in the ordinary
• Photography tips with a professional photographer