We’ve been loving Truth in Tinsel this year. My {almost} three year old can remember the stories and loves retelling the day’s adventure to her dad each night at dinner. I love the fact that we’re focusing on Christ all month long instead of just rushing through the Christmas story on the big day. Here’s a snapshot of all the fun we’ve been having!
Day Eight: Jesus is like the Rising Sun (Luke 1: 57-80)
We decided to adapt this craft a bit to make it easier for little hands. If you look closely, you can see the Bible reference across the bottom. I also wrote “Jesus is like the Rising Sun” across the top after I took this picture. If I were to do it again, I would write the Scripture and Title more to the inside and then cut triangles along the outside to make the plate look more a shining sun. This project was a little abstract for my kids, but we did talk about how Jesus was the light of the world (again) and read through the book The Light of the World
. If you’re using the Jesus Storybook Bible, pages 184 and 190 are great for this lesson.
For this one, we skipped trying to make a Joseph figure and used some Nativity “build-a-scene” stickers I had picked up from Oriental Trading recently.
As can be expected, the stickers were pretty poor quality and my 18 month old kept ripping all the people to shreds before they made it to the paper. As a result, his Nativity scene looks a bit like a massacre!
The girls (both age 3) did a little better at keeping their people whole 
Finished!
There are also a ton of printable Nativity characters you can use for this too (to make a puppet like Mary and Elizabeth). Check My Little House, Making Friends, and Prepared Not Scared.
Picture taken from The Activity Mom
I appreciate the fact that making Joseph’s pillow is a no-sew project! However, even the pipe cleaner method seemed to be a bit too taxing for our crew. I had some scrap fabric in the craft drawer, so I had each kid pick out their material and then we cut it to about double the size of a pillow. I hot glued two edges (one was sealed by the fold) and then had the kids stuff cotton balls inside. Once the pillow was filled, I hot glued the remaining edge. Then we played out the scene from the Bible (again and again!). We also made a matching blanket to complete the scene.
Every time we finished, Abigail (age 3) exclaimed, “Again! Let’s do it again!”. So again we would go! About 4-5 times into it though, Joseph started singing a different tune. Instead of getting up and listening to the angel — he would start saying “Go away, angel. I’m very sleepy.” Oops. That’s not how the story goes!
Since we didn’t have a Joseph figure, we had to construct one from pipe cleaners real quick!
Now this project REALLY deviates from the Truth in Tinsel book. We had been doing a Polar Express theme in our homeschool preschool. We had made a “Name Train” to help the kids recognize their own name and so we just put Jesus’ name in the mix. Jesus wants to ride the name train too!
Day Twelve: The Census
Okay, now we’re really getting off track! I love the project for today, but I was kind of wanting to do that as a stocking stuffer for the kids, so I devised a different activity to talk about the census. We lined up a bunch of Little People and animals and decided to count them using the Abacus. My {almost} three year old has been struggling with her counting anyway, so this was the perfect activity for today!
That’s as far as we’ve gotten so far! I better get a move-on if I want to stay ahead of the game!
What About You?
How are you enjoying Truth in Tinsel so far? Leave me a comment and link up to your blog so I can check it out!
Don’t even tell me you haven’t bought the book yet! There is still time! Grab it here!
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