Visualizing the birth of Christ

At church, Joel has been encouraging families to do Advent Scripture readings together at light Advent candles each night. This is something that our family did last year for the first time, and we thought it was a meaningful tradition. This year, it has not worked as well to do a reading every night, but we have been able to sit down once a week and so some kind of activity as a family that fits with the theme for the week. So last night's activity resulted in these beautiful drawings.

We turned off all the lights, lit one candle, and talked about what it might have been like for Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem that night. One of the things Anna has been doing in school is to visualize a story when the teacher is reading it (instead of looking at a picture), and then drawing the story as you heard it. So we had the girls close their eyes and visualize different parts of the story as Joel read it, and then we had them draw what they saw.

This is Anna's drawing. I thought it was interesting that Joseph has two staffs. And I asked Anna about the other thing he is holding and she said it is a candle because it was dark in the stable.

And this is Norah's drawing. After she heard Anna talking about the candle, she added candles in her Joseph's hands as well. And she chose to draw a horse (on the right) and a cat (on the left) as the animals that were in the stable.

We've been talking about the Nativity a lot around here, so it is interesting to get a glimpse of what is going on in their little minds. Our neighbors across the street are acting out a Living Nativity today with their family, so we are interested to see what that's like. Although the blowing snow and below zero temps might deter them from doing it! Brrrr! We're excited to spend some time in New Mexico next week where it is quite a bit warmer!