Three Candles Burning

On the Third Sunday of Advent we remember the shepherds who were watching their flocks at night near Bethlehem. They had to stay awake to keep the wolves away from the sheep. Suddenly, a great light shone from the sky and it was so bright that it hurt their eyes. 

The shepherds were afraid and their hearts started beating. If they were able to hear anything above the pounding of their own hearts, they thought they heard singing? That made them more afraid until they listened to the singing.  There were angels who sang something like this: "Fear not. We bring you tidings of great joy. Unto you is born a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. You must go now to Bethlehem! Something wonderful is about to happen that will change everything!"

The third board in the Godly Play Advent story.

Moving further along the journey to Bethlehem.

This week in our family Advent devotion, we spent some time wondering together why God chose to proclaim his good news to the shepherds. We wondered who were they? How did they feel rushing to find a stable in the middle of the night? And how did they feel after they looked into the baby's eyes? What did Mary and Joseph think about a bunch of shepherds coming to see their child in the middle of the night?

Mom had a nasty cold this weekend and couldn't get out, so we baked meringue cookies beforehand and had them after our devotion with Kinder Punsch and coffee.: )

These are the chocolate meringue cookies
and my kids' favorite Christmas past time: cracking nuts.
It's also a great activity for fine motor skills!

Nature Nativity

This is another lovely project that I learned from Birgit, the Waldorf educator at our kindergarten: a nativity scene made with nature materials.

To begin you need the following materials: assorted treasures from your nearest park or forest (moss, sticks, chestnuts, rocks, tree bark, acorns, pine cones, fir tree branch, etc.); walnut shell halves, air-drying clay or plasticine, glue, terra cotta  saucer for a flowerpot, a small piece of material, a small piece of cotton, gold paper, and a candle.

Next, place the moss in the flowerpot saucer.

To make baby Jesus, wrap a tiny piece of cotton inside a small square of material. Then, tuck it inside a walnut shell half.  (Mine stayed in place without any glue.) Then, make a small head out of clay for baby Jesus.

To make a small stable, I used clay and glue to attach sticks to a piece of tree bark. Then, add other elements using the nature materials you have on hand, such as a pine cone or fir tree branch as  a tree. You can also cut a golden star out of paper to hang either on the tree or attach it to another stick.  To top it off, add a small candle.

Three and four year-olds generally need a lot of help from an adult to do this project, but older preschoolers and elementary age children can do it most of it by themselves. Such a simple, yet enchanting project!

I can't wait to see what the kids in the Advent Club do with this project!








Linked to Monday Madness at Let Kids Create and Art 4 Little Hands

The Magic Onions

Crafty Moms Share

Frontier Dreams


Raising Memories

"A Gift for our City" - Advent Club 2011

Gute Nachricht: Die AdventsAG 2011 dürfte diese Woche anfangen! Die evangelische Gemeinde in der selben Strasse von unserer Schule hat uns Räumlichkeiten im letzen Moment besorgt. (Einen großen Dank an die Pfarrerin!) Good news! Advent Club 2011 started last week with a group of 10 children from our local elementary school. The local church located in the same street as our school graciously provided us with a room to meet in at the last minute.  (A big thank you to the pastor of the church!)

Das Thema diesmal ist "Ein Geschenk für unsere Stadt". In der AG machen wir uns gemeinsam Gedanken darüber wie Gott seinen Sohn auf die Erde sandte: nicht als mächtiger König mit Armee und Reichtum, sondern als kleines, hilfloses Baby. Danach machte dieses Baby kleine Schritte, die die Welt auf den Kopf gestellt haben. Wir möchten den Kindern damit kommunizieren, dass Gott so öfter wirkt - durch die kleinen Schritte von uns Menschen.  Kinder sind sehr wichtig und können auch "kleine Schritte" machen um ihre Welt zu verändern. Während dieser 3 Wochen zusammen, werden wir auch "kleine Schritte" machen und unserer Stadt ein Weihnachtsgeschenk geben. Our theme this year is "A Gift for our City". In the Advent Clubs, we consider how God chose to send his Son, not as a king with a powerful army and riches, but as a small, helpless baby. This baby then took many small steps that led him to turning the world upside-down. We seek to communicate to the children that this is how God most often works - through people taking small steps - and that they as children can begin to take small steps now to change their world. In our three weeks together, we will also take some "small steps" together and give our city a small Christmas gift. 

Die Kinder waren ein bisschen überrascht als wir mit der Geschichte, "Die Große Familie", von Abraham und Sarah anfingen. Diese Geschichte ist normaleweise nicht im Vordergrund während der Adventszeit! Meine Absicht war den Kindern mit ein paar Fragen zum Nachdenken zu bringen. Woher kam Jesus? In welche Familie ist er eingeboren? Woher lernte er "kleine Schritte" im Glauben zu machen? Ich habe öfter erfahren, dass Kinder manchmal die Verbindung zwischen dem Alten Testament und Jesu nicht mitbekommen. "Die Große Familie" hilft Kindern zu verstehen, dass Jesus nicht einfach aus der Luft erschienen ist.  The kids were a bit surprised when we began with "The Great Family", the story of Abraham and Sarah. Not usually the first Advent story that kids hear! However, I wanted the children to consider where Jesus came from? What kind of family was he born into? And where did he learn to start taking "small steps" of faith? In my experience, children (even though who attend church each Sunday) often do not make the connection between the Old Testament stories and Jesus. "The Great Family" helps children understand that Jesus didn't just appear out of thin air. 

If you are familiar with "The Great Family", you might be wondering why
Mary, Joseph and Jesus are in the desert with Isaac and Rebekah.
More on that in another upcoming post!

Nach dem Geschichtenkreis hatten die Kinder drei Möglichkeiten um kreativ über Advent zu reflektieren. Die erste Beschäftigung war mit den Materiallen von der Geschichten zu spielen. Zuerst waren die Kinder ein bisschen schüchtern sie von dem Regal zu holen.  Deshalb fing ich an allein mit dem Wüstensack und Figuren zu spielen. Dann kamen ein paar Mädchen um mitzuspielen. After the story, the children had three options. The first was to explore the stories further by playing with the materials. (I also had the story for next week on the focus table.) At first the children were too shy to take the stories off the shelves, so I pulled out the Desert Sack and began to play alone.  Then, the children joined in and I quietly moved out of their way. 

Die zweite Option war mit Ölkreide und Buntstiften zu malen. The second option was to reflect on Advent and draw something of their choice with oil pastels and colored pencils. 

Die dritte Option was Weihnachtsanhänger aus Bienenwachsplatten auszustecken. Diese Idee kam von einem lieblings Blog, Naturkinder. (Bitte liest die originale Artikel.) Bienenwachs sieht herrlich aus und duftet lecker auf dem Weihnachtsbaum. Mit einem Tipp von der Naturkinder habe ich die Bienenwachsplatten von einem behinderten Werkstatt bestellt. The third option was to make ornaments from beeswax plates using cookie butters. This idea came from one of my favorite blogs, Naturkinder. (Please read the original post here.)  The beeswax looks and smells amazing on a Christmas tree.  Using a tip from Naturkinder, I ordered beeswax plates made in a workshop that employs handicapped people.

Mit den Anhängern haben wir die Kinder ermütigt den ersten kleinen Schritt zu machen. Wir baten sie darum ein paar an jemanden zu schenken, der gerade ein bisschen Freude gebraucht (z.B. Freund, Nachbar, LehrerIn). With these ornaments, I encouraged the children to take our first "small step" together.  I asked them to think of someone that needs some joy right now (maybe a friend, neighbor, or teacher) and give the ornament to them. 


Am Ende haben wir Kinder Punsch getrunken, festliche Brownies gegessen und Weihnachtslieder gesungen. To end out time together, we feasted on Kinder Punsch (a warm, spiced, fruity drink for children) and Christmas brownies, and sang Christmas carols.

Mit diesen Kindern zu sein war der Höhepunkt meiner Woche! Being with these kids was definitely the highlight of my week!

See the rest of our Advent club:
Week 2
Week 3

Russia "Snapshot" #6: Museum Fun

My kids enjoy short museum trips. Their attention spans are limited, of course, so we are selective about which museums we go to and how long we stay. : )

The Ulan-Ude History Museum, which has been built since I lived there, turned out to be a real gem.  It is a tiny museum, but has a discovery room of sorts for children. In it, there is an interactive pioneer trading post set up to show children what they were like in the 19th century.

Playing "store" with things that would have been sold in the 1800s.

Then, we found the 19th century Russian and Buryat dress-up costumes! That made it all the more fun.

I've already showed you some pictures from the Ethnographical Museum, an outdoor museum in Ulan-Ude, in the Let it Snow post, but here are a couple more. Below are some of the fun cut-outs that we took pictures with. 

A typical Buryat family?
(The extra child is the son of my friends, Oksana & Vladik.)

Camels in Siberia? Yes, camels are one of five traditional
domesticated animals that the Buryats herded.
The Ethnographical Museum has a small zoo with these guys and more.

The Natural Science Museum in Ulan-Ude is definitely not one of the world's great museums. It hasn't changed much since the early 90s either, but we managed to have a little fun anyway.

Although she enjoyed seeing real nerpa seals,
my daughter was happy to see this one up-close.

My son, the clown!

In Moscow, we went to the Pushkin Museum to see their Impressionist/Expressionist collection. The highlight for me was when we walked into a room filled with Matisses and both kids started yelling,  at the top of their lungs, "I know who this is! It's Matisse!" And I thought, okay, I have done something right in their art education . . .

The Pushkin Museum in Moscow. (Source)

This is my last "snapshot" of our trip! Hope you have enjoyed all of them and thank for reading!

Russia Snapshot #5: Food

Food is a huge part of our travel experiences, no matter where we go. From roasted goat and boiled beans in Uganda to crawfish in Louisiana, tasting the local cuisine helps us get a little closer to understanding the people.  On our trip to Russia, one great joy for my husband and me was introducing our children to the culinary highlights.

Below my daughter eats her first pelemeni on Russian soil. Pelemeni are a type of ravioli filled with ground meat and served with dill and sour cream. Sometimes it is served as a soup and sometimes the pelemeni are fried. Though my kids have eaten pelemeni many times before - I make them and we can buy them frozen in Berlin - there was something special about eating them in their country of origin.

My husband loves posi, a traditional Buryat dish. Posi are large, steamed dumplings filled with ground pork, beef and lamb. There is even a special way to eat it: since there is a hole the top of the dumpling that the broth can spill out of, you gently hold a dumpling in your hand, take a small bite from of the side, and then suck out the broth. Posi are crowd-pleasers for both young and old, but you only need to eat a couple to be full for days! Below we are eating posi in Ulan-Ude.

A favorite Siberian past time is eating cedar nuts, which come from a cone just like pine nuts. There is an art to cracking the small nuts and it can be addictive once you start. When I lived in Ulan-Ude, most of my American teammates would give up in frustration saying it was too much work for such a small nut. But this is a small joy in life that I learned to treasure. After a few minutes, my kids were walking down the street with a pocketful of cedar nuts cracking away just like any Siberian kid would.

Fresh cedar nuts from the market.

We also tried the marvelous fresh berries from the market. The orange ones are called "oblipekha" in Russia and "sea-buckthorn" berry in English and "Sanddorn" in German. These sour berries are often called "Siberian pineapple" and are delicious with a little sugar mixed in.

Friends in Moscow made fresh blini for us, one of my favorite Russian treats. These crepe-like pancakes

can be eaten with marmelade  . . .

  . . . or savory with things like caviar and sour cream!

We also had plov, a traditional Uzbek rice pilaf with lamb or beef, carrots, onions and sometimes raisins. It's mouth-watering!

Our "Plov Evening" with friends in Moscow.

Hmmm . . . I think we need a few more varieties of sausage here:

And did we mention that we love the ice cream in Russia?!!!

The Topic of Santa

As spiritual mentors, how do we deal with the topic of Santa (in all of his various forms!)?  Do we go along with the tradition of teaching kids to believe in Santa? If we talk about Jesus the same way that we talk about Santa, can that cause children to subconsciously believe that Jesus is also a fairy tale?

From a Wikipedia article, this is an 1881 illustration by Thomas Nast. 

I distinctly remember the day that I found out there was no Santa Claus. I was 7-years-old and had been in a serious argument at school with a little boy about Santa's existence. I defended Santa and Rudolph as vehemently as I would have defended the Immaculate Conception.  Shaken by the little boy's counter arguments, I went to my mother who sheepishly admitted that there was no Santa.  I was crushed. . . and angry. Why had every adult in my life lied to me all those years? Fortunately, this disappointment never caused me to doubt my faith in God, but I have heard from others that it cause them to wonder if the story about Bethlehem was made up as well.

My husband, however, had a completely different experience and found the whole Santa thing to be great fun as a kid. When he found out the truth, he just laughed and kept playing along.  So after we had children ourselves, we had serious debates over what to tell our children.  Funny how we got into such heated arguments over something like Santa.:)

We both quickly found that in a multicultural world, keeping up the Santa tradition becomes complicated. With the media and friends from different ethnic backgrounds, kids catch on quick to the different versions (or lack of) to the story. Who exactly does bring all those presents? In the US, Santa and St. Nicholas are the same person. In northern Germany, they are two completely different people. And in many parts of southern Germany, Austria and northern Italy, St. Nicholas also has a sidekick, a sometimes rather scary helper named "Knecht Ruprecht" or "Krampus" who brings naughty children switches.

This is a harmless image of Knecht Ruprecht, St. Nicholas' "helper",
but google the name and you'll see some other images! (Source)

In other parts of southern Germany, there is no Santa at all.  Instead, the "Christkind" ("Christ Child") brings the presents.  Depending on who you talk to, the Christkind can be either Baby Jesus himself or a sort of angel.  (In Nuremburg there is a bi-annual beauty pageant to choose a young girl who will be the Christkind. She then makes public appearances at Christmas markets to wow the young children.) In the Czech Republic, "Ježišek" ("Little Jesus") brings the presents.  (Hmmm . . . the Czech Republic is also the most atheistic nation in Europe. Could there be a historical connection between the birth of Christ being reduced to another form of Santa Claus and the atheism?) In Russia, "Ded Moroz" ("Grandfather Frost") brings the gifts at New Year's, which might be the most healthy thing of all, since the gift-giving has no connection at all to the Orthodox Christmas celebration on January 7. And what about kids whose families don't celebrate Christmas? My son wanted to know in the first grade why his Muslim friends had no Santa visits. Keeping up the Santa tradition is not as easy as it used to be in a global village . . .

Sixteen-year-old Franziska Handke, the Nuremburg Christkind for 2011-12.
Click here for more pictures and info.

In the end, my husband and I settled on a compromise: we told our kids the truth, but explained that it was a fun "game" that everyone, young and old, plays. Consequently, both kids are secure knowing the truth, but still have the fun of drawing pictures for St. Nicholas, singing Santa songs, or leaving cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve.

I have also decided that if any children ask me directly about Santa, I will also explain it to them in this way. I certainly don't want to destroy the "Christmas Magic" in their early years, but as a spiritual mentor, I feel that I have to honor the trust that the children around me extend.  This means helping sort out which stories are fun fairy tales and which ones are not.

How do you feel about the Santa tradition and what do you tell the children you care for?

Nikolaus / St. Nicholas Day

On December 5, children all over Germany polish their boots and set them out for St. Nicholas to come. He usually brings clementines, nuts, chocolate and/or a small gift. Then on December 6, the Feast of St. Nicholas, the kids wake up early and run to their boots. My kids, even though they are both old enough to know about the historical St. Nicholas and don't believe that he actually comes, eagerly got their boots ready. My son actually put his whole boot under the water faucet, completely drenching it, so that it was too wet to wear the next day.: )

Nikolaus brought the kids clementines, chocolate and new colored pencils!

They got up extra early to check their boots!

I always read the story of the real St. Nicholas to the children and remind them that we polish the boots and give gifts on this day as a way to remember this man's faith and selfless life. The book below, "The Story of St. Nicholas", is excellent for school-age children and has beautiful illustrations embossed with gold.

In Germany, St. Nicholas and "Der Weihnachtsmann" (Santa Claus) are two different people. I am always met with blank stares when I try to explain to German friends that they have melded into the same person in American pop culture.  I appreciate the distinction, because the story of Nicholas of Myra is an inspiring one that I don't want to get lost among Santa, Rudolph and company.