Christmas! It’s a time of year that I love as we slow life down and take in the wonder of the Incarnation – God with us! As a mom, I love nothing more than to bring my children into this sense of wonder and delight. One tool that we’ve come to dearly love in our home is OhAmanda’s Truth in the Tinsel advent devotional. I first told you all about it two years ago. I wrote about how it was so understandable and relate-able. I think both of those are key – especially when doing a devotional with really young kids.
Why We LOVE Truth in the Tinsel!
Each of the 24 devotions contains the following elements:
Read it together: This part has the scripture passage reference. I love that she encourages us to flip the pages of our own Bibles instead of just having the passage there to read. Our kids need to see the importance of opening up the Word together.
Make it together: Here is the craft ornament for the day. She has step by step instructions as well as photographs. I’m a type A, do it by the book type, but when my sister told me of some ways she was improvising, it helped me release the need to do it exactly like the book. So if you are that type, feel released! You can improvise – but you don’t have too.
Talk about it together: I just love this section. Amanda has such an easy-going conversational tone that comes through in her book, making it so easy to unpack beautiful aspects of the Biblical text you just read. It is a great way to practice having those special spiritual conversations with your children that many feel unsure about having.
Do more together: Here she often includes a fun extra activity that you can do as well if you have extra time that day.
Other bonuses that this book includes:
A craft supply list. There is no need to hunt through each day’s devotional and set up a list. She’s done that for you. Simply circle what you don’t have from the list and hit the store.
Alternative Schedules: Let’s face it. This season is busy. She lays out four ideas for alternative schedules if you don’t have time to do all 24.
Two Countdown Options: Printable paper chain or printable squares. We opted for the second option. I found an image of Mary and Joseph on the donkey and then one of Bethlehem that I printed off and laminated. {I can’t find the image I used, but this, this or this might work if you want to set up something similar.}
And My NEWEST favorite addition:
Printable Coloring Ornaments! << You don’t HAVE to do all of the crafts!
It’s been a crazy couple of years and I didn’t have the energy to get to all of the crafts. I had a colicky newborn and I was reinventing how we ate to accommodate her huge list of food sensitivities… I loved reading the devotional, but fell off the bandwagon with the ornaments. 🙁 So last year when I wanted to do it again, I started to panic. We would be heading out of town for Christmas and I still had a little girl with huge food needs that was taking a lot of my time. Amanda saved the day when she released her Printable Coloring Ornaments. {I would have hugged her, except we hadn’t met in real life yet. That didn’t happen until 2 weeks ago!} I highly recommend snagging these too so you have something to fall back on if you don’t make it to the craft, or for those days when you are out of town travelling, or when life just seems a bit overwhelming.
We loved taking a piece of twine and pinning it to the back of our couch. Last year was a sweet success!
BUY THE EBOOK and/or PRINTABLE ORNAMENTS: Truth in the Tinsel
Join the Truth in the Tinsel community on Facebook!
My kids 8. 9. and 11 are looking forward to doing this again. You can do a journal on the days devotional at grade level. As far as the ornaments you can always get your older kids to do a more complicated version or draw/ design their own.
This is wonderful to hear. We are going to do it again next year when my “baby” is 4. My older ones will be 11, 9, 7 at the time and I’ll use your idea to up it for them! 🙂
I just came across your blog while searching for some Advent ideas, and absolutely love this concept! Thanks so much for the great review…excited to try this! 🙂
I hope you enjoy it as much as our family has!
This is such a delightful program. And it you have more than one child they can give one of the ornaments to their grandma! That way the grandma gets to display some lovely art work and the child gets to explained the story\ devotional as well!