Getting Ready for Advent + Link Party

Advent is now just around the corner. And here in Germany, where our Thanksgiving (Erntedankfest) was in October, the Christmas markets are already being built, and the smell of Glühwein and Lebkuchen - very Advent-y things - are in the air.

I know that many of you are already getting ready for Advent. How does one get ready for a season of "getting ready"? I've thought about this a lot in the past few years. Let's face it, Advent can be a mountain of stress for most people. What helps me is to keep the idea of "waiting for the King" at the center. Advent is a time of waiting for and anticipating how Jesus will come into our lives in a fresh way.

Another thing that helps me is to decide beforehand what I can and can't do during Advent. I can do a few things: a few art projects, read some special books and tell the story of Christmas in creative ways to my kids. I can't however send out mounds of Christmas cards, buy presents for the whole extended family, or give Advent parties.

Despite what the commercial calendar tells us, it isn't all over on Dec. 25. That's when Christmas actually begins, and then we have all the time in the world to celebrate after Christmas Day. In fact, it's a great idea to leave many activities until the days following Christmas when you have time off and things are a little more relaxed.: )

In case you want to go ahead and begin planning, I'd like to share with you a few ideas from Advents past and are looking for a new idea.

The top of my list is the Godly Play Advent story. You can tell it in one setting or split it up into 5 parts.  For children under 5 years of age, I would definitely tell it in more than one sitting. Also, if you don't have time to learn a long story, telling it this way avoids stress. The English version is in  Godly Play Vol.3: 20 Core Presentations for Winter and the German one is in Godly Play 03: Gleichnisse und Weihnachtszeit.

Also, I'll be telling the enrichment story, "The Mystery of Christmas" about some of the lesser told parts of the Christmas story this year as well.  It features Giotto paintings and can be found in both of the above mentioned books as well. This story is better suited to children 5 and up.

If you are looking for art projects, there is the Nature Nativity

and this Nativity Collage Silhouette

and Stacking Christmas Trees for the little ones.

You can also make Beeswax Ornaments

and, if it's cold enough,  Ice Ornaments.

I'd now like to invite all of you to a new link party:

Please feel free to share with us your wonderful ideas for Advent and Christmas! 

I'll be posting each week until New Year's. We all love to have a pool of ideas to gather from, so please share old or new posts.

If you participate, please link back to Explore and Express. Feel free to grab the button above or in the side bar. 

By participating in the link party, you give me permission to share your photos in weekly highlights.

Happy (Early) Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is my favorite of the truly American holidays. No gifts or fuss - just a few great dishes and lots of thankfulness. Since Thanksgiving Day is just another workday Thursday in Berlin (the German version of the holiday is called "Erntedankfest" and is in October), we always have to celebrate either on the weekend before or after. So we celebrated today!

We were three families: 6 adults and 5 children. I made turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie. My friend from Tennessee made the sweet potatoes and a pecan pie that was to die for! Our German friends brought a tasty green salad to complement all the heavy Thanksgiving dishes.

My kids made these great turkey place settings for their friends:

And I placed the pilgrims in the middle of the children's table. (I need to find

a figure of Squanto, because I think he is the real hero of the story!)

My kids love to hear the history behind Thanksgiving and they can tell the 

story themselves now. 

And this was the adults' table. We played a game of Skip-bo afterwards

and the kids played a song for us on the keyboards and drums. 

Blessings and a wonderful family gathering to all of my American readers on Thursday! And I wish all of my other readers a great week as well!

Serve the City with Kids

Recently, an acquaintance of mine who grew up with the Montessori Method remarked that as a child, he was perplexed when adults would make a distinction between "work" and "play". Children naturally blur the lines between work and play, when a healthy attitude towards work has been modeled for them by trusted adults. And for many children, doing "work" with and for others is a concrete way that they express their spirituality. They connect with God through action.

To help foster a lifestyle of service in all of us,  our family volunteers once a month with Serve the City Berlin. Serve the City is a global movement to help individuals who want to make a difference start doing it. Many people have a desire to lend a helping hand, but sometimes don't know how to start or make time in their already overwhelming schedules. Serve the City helps with this by organizing service events once a month. We simply donate one afternoon each month of our time. 

My children love being a part of these projects! Yes, sometimes it is hard to get them out the door on a Saturday, or they complain about wanting to stay home and play. And sometimes I struggle with feeling too tired to go. But once we get out the door, we always come home so glad that we went and took part. We meet so many interesting people and make small steps in seeing Berlin become a better place. 

Here are some of the projects that we have participated in:

The picture below was taken at a hospice where we did some garden work. Beforehand, our kids asked what a hospice was and we were curious as to how they might react to being in a place for terminally ill patients. They were, however, completely undaunted and wanted to know if some of the residents might want to play Uno with them. (That gives me a great idea for a future Easter Club project!)

Our Serve the City team doing garden work at a hospice.

The local Salvation Army was also been a great experience for the kids. We made waffles for the homeless people who visit and played games with them. It has been enriching for the kids to meet people from all walks of life. 

Playing board games at the Salvation Army.

Our latest project was packing gift boxes for "Weihnachten im Schuhkarton", which is what Operation Christmas Child is known as in Germany. Here is my son and one of his friends with a box. They also drew a greeting card for the little boy who will receive it. 

If you want to serve with your children, see if there is a Serve the City chapter near you or an organization like it. Even carving a small amount go time out of your schedule can make a huge difference  - for your kids and for the world!

Linked to Friday's Nature Table at The Magic Onions

and Grünzeug at Naturkinder

Some Exciting News!

There's some exciting news that I'd like to share with you. I was recently accepted to take part in a Godly Play Trainers' program in December, and I am absolutely thrilled at the opportunity!

I'll be traveling to Holland to study under Dr. Rebecca Nye, the author of Children's Spirituality: What it is and Why it Matters, and Reverend Peter Privett, who have both been instrumental in the spread of Godly Play to European countries. My fellow students will be from England, Belgium and the Netherlands. The training will also be in English, so it will be an opportunity for me to get to know Godly Play all over again in my native tongue. Since almost all of my Godly Play experience has been in German, this will be new territory for me.

As part of the training, we each have to tell a story and have it critiqued. I will be preparing "Holy Baptism". I was very happy at this assignment, because I have now told this story enough to be very familiar with it. Then, I will in turn critique someone else's story. 

We also have a ton of required reading on children's spirituality. Fascinating stuff, but definitely not light reading. If you are wondering why I didn't post much last week, it's because of all this homework!

I am looking forward to so many things in this training. Getting to talk about Godly Play for hours with people who are just as passionate about it as I am. Receiving honest, helpful critique and feedback. Soaking up the wisdom of people who have been doing this for much longer than I have. Learning how to give helpful instruction to others. Working and playing together.

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes - both with the preparation and the actual training!

Wittenberg & their first Godly Play room

October 31 is better known in northern Germany for being Reformation Day than for Halloween. It was fitting, then, that we spent the weekend after in the city of Wittenberg, where it all began. I had to finish some work with a Godly Play colleague who lives there, and we thought it would be a great opportunity to let our children explore a little history.

We attended church at the Schlosskirche, where Luther posted the 95 Theses that put the Protestant Reformation in motion.

Schlosskirche, Wittenberg

One of the many plaques of Luther inside the church. 

And this is the famed door where the 95 Theses were actually hung.
Today, you can read them on the plaques to the left in the picture.

Wittenberg is a charming small city that has lots of things to see: the Lutherhaus (Luther House), a kid-friendly museum; the Cranach-Höfe (Cranach Courtyards), which host art exhibitions and offer art courses and other activities for children; two historical churches; and a small zoo. 

But the thing that my kids were most excited about was the Godly Play room located in the  Cranach Courtyards. My colleague, Heidi, tells Godly Play stories to groups of preschool and school-age children who visit the Courtyards. 

Believe or not, my kids had never actually seen a real Godly Play room, because our church plant does not have one and there is not one close to us. They were like kids in a candy store! 

This was the first time my daughter had ever seen a "desert box". (We have a portable "desert sack" in Berlin.)

They saw a lot of materials that I don't have, and were amazed that all of those things could be in one place. 

After a while, my son pulled out the Parable of the Good Shepherd and treated me and Heidi, my colleague, to a story. It was such a neat thing to see how he had internalized the story and was able to tell it from his heart.

Interestingly enough, Heidi is working on a story told in Godly Play style about Luther. 

If you are ever in Wittenberg in June, then you can check out the city-wide festival celebrating Luther's wedding to Katarina von Bora. (We hope to go next year!) And on Oct. 31, you can attend the Reformation Festival.

Godly Play: Exile and Return

"Exile and Return" tells the story of how Israel and Judah are taken into captivity by Assyria and Babylon, and how a remnant returns many years later with Ezra and Nehemiah to rebuild the temple and the city walls. As Godly Play is not meant to focus on historical facts, the whole process of this is greatly simplified in the story. Instead, this core lesson focuses on how the people of God discover that God is not only to be found in the temple. Miles away from their homeland in great sorrow, they discover that God is with them in Babylon as well.

The picture above is shortly before the final scene of the story. The chain represents "exile". Six figures have returned to Jerusalem, representing the groups that returned with Ezra and Nehemiah. Three figures remain in Babylon - they have chosen to stay, because they have seen that God is in the strange and foreign land as well.

When I got to the part where the people of God were being marched through the desert towards Babylon, I laid down the chain and said, "They were in exile. They could not go home." The oldest child in the room suddenly asked very loudly, "What does 'exile' mean?" I thought for a moment about what I should do. The easiest thing would be to just tell him what it meant. But that wouldn't help him in figuring things out for himself. So I told him to listen to the rest of the story and see if he saw any clues that would help him. 

When we began the "Wondering", he again asked, more frustrated than ever, what 'exile' meant. This time, I held up the chain and asked him what he thought of when he saw the chain. He immediately responded with "prison". I said, "Yes, that's what exile is like. It is like being in a prison of sorts where you can't go home."

Everybody's favorite part of the story was that the people of God found out that He was with them everywhere, even in Babylon. When asked about the most important part of the story, one child said that it was being carried away to Babylon. Why? 

"Because if they hadn't been carried away, they would never have learned that God was with them everywhere." 

Recognizing that great lessons come through hard situations -  I am continually amazed at the wisdom of the children. May that child remember this his whole life long!

During the creative phase, one child began playing with the chain. He then made a cross with the chain and proceeded to reenact the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. His play looked something like the picture below:

In my opinion, "Exile and Return" is an important story to tell before the Advent season begins. So many of the older Christmas songs in both German and English deal with the theme of Israel being ransomed. This, of course, refers both to the deliverance from sin and to the longing of the Jewish nation for deliverance from dominating political powers. Knowing this historical context in this story helps children understand why the people of Jesus' time were waiting for a different type of king to come. 

Linked to Montessori Monday at Living Montessori Now

and Waldorf Wednesday at Seasons of Joy

St. Martin's Day

November 11 is St. Martin's Day, and it is a beloved festival in most of Germany. Children can be seen everywhere in the days before and after walking around after sunset with their beautiful, handmade lanterns. 

These are my children's Martin lanterns that they made
this year at school.

We became acquainted with this holiday after coming to Germany. Secular or religious, almost everyone finds something valuable in the story of Martin of Tours.  Martin was a soldier in the Holy Roman Empire who came upon a beggar one cold, winter day in front of the city gate of Amiens. The beggar was poorly dressed and freezing. In medieval times, most people thought that the poor were either cursed or had done something terrible to deserve their plight and were largely ignored by the general population. Martin did something that was completely revolutionary for the time: he took his warm soldier's coat, cut it in half with his sword, and gave it to the freezing man. 

That evening Martin had a dream in which he saw Christ saying to him, "What you did for my brother, you did for me." Afterwards, Martin was baptized and later devoted his life to helping the poor. 

Today, we tell the story to children and emphasize the importance of sharing and taking care of the poor. Kindergartens, churches and schools organize Martin festivals with lantern parades. The sea of lights in the first dark days of autumn are breathtaking. 

The children also sing special Martin's songs. You can find the words to the most famous ones, "St. Martin's Song", here,  and "I go with my Lantern", here. (For the melody click here and here.) 

At the neighborhood Martin's festival this year put on by our local Lutheran church, we were treated to a "Schattenspiel" (shadow play) of Martin's life.

St. Martin encounters the beggar at the city gate.

People bake Martin's rolls and bring them to church to break in half and share with one another. 

Sharing "Martinsbrötchen", crescent-shaped
Martin's rolls.

It is also traditional to have a visit from a live "St. Martin" with horse. 

I'd also like to share an illustration with you from the story, drawn by my friend, the artist Lilian Mousli. (Please do not reproduce it any way as it is copyrighted.)

If  any of you have St. Martin's traditions, please share your links in the comments!

Happy St. Martin's Day!



Linked to Waldorf Wednesday at Seasons of Joy

and Friday's Nature Table at The Magic Onions

and Grünzeug at Naturkinder