Prayer Journals

We've reached the end of the year and I had New Year's eve off.  So I decided to wrap it up with a last project with the girls by making prayer journals.

I found this great printable from Mother's Niche and printed it out two copies per page and double sided (so there are four for each piece of paper).  Then, I cut the pages in half and two pieces of card stock to the same size (this is the front and back cover).  Next I punched two holes in each page.  Then, the girls stacked it all together and ran a ribbon through the holes and tied it to bind them together. After that, the girls used pens to decorate the covers.

I didn't do enough pages for the full year, but it's enough to get them started and I've let them know we can do more later if they run out.

My hope is that they'll use these to help them focus more on the content of their prayers rather than saying the same thing over and over.

Advent

Growing up, our church always observed Advent by lighting a candle each Sunday in Advent.  Our current church doesn't do it as a church, but in kid's church they learned about the Advent candles and my youngest mentioned it to us.

So, this year, I decided to do it at home.  Each candle has a different meaning and some churches use 4 and some use 5.  My church growing up was using 5 when I left (but did use 4 at one point).  The meanings of the candles differs depending on which church so I asked my youngest which meanings they were learning and went with those.  Then I looked around and found this pdf which matched up with the meanings she was learning and has Bible passages to go with each one.   While there are only 4 candles mentioned in the pdf, I did use 5, with the fifth candle representing Christ (that seems pretty consistent, if there are 5 candles the 5th represents Christ).  The last candle (the Christ candle) usually gets lit Christmas Eve.

Each Sunday night in Advent, we lit the candle and read the verse(s), starting with the first candle and working to the current one.  We were out of town the last Sunday and for Christmas itself, so those two we lit when we got home.

The girls enjoyed this and I think anything that helps them remember why we celebrate Christmas is a good thing.