Advent School

This post started over at Schola et Studium but I think perhaps it fits better over here.

Faith at Dumb Ox Academy wrote about her plans for Advent School. I liked that title even though I'm not really a schooly type, so I'm borrowing it! I immediately had a visual image of a purple file folder. I know, that is strange, but rather typical for my rightbrained, global thinking mind -- to think of a colored container right away. : ). Anyway, I'm going with the purple folder idea to contain all the things I want to do this Advent.

(Right now I have a file folder organization system where there is a plain manila folder for each week and each month. For each season there is a colored folder, and for the "transition week" (almost every month changes over in the middle of a week) there is an orange folder which is really helpful for me as a visual reminder to get things in order for the next month). So the purple idea works nicely for me to set apart the month as different from the rest of the year.

Some general context:

• Helen at Castle of the Immaculate has compiled a bunch of Advent Dreams and hopes.
• Here is TeachingMom's great Advent Calendar.
• And here is a compilation of Christmas units at Real Learning.
• Here are some Christmas printables and other information.

All the possibilities are overwhelming, of course. I thought:

For organization of Christmas prep

• Flylady's Holiday Control Journal. (I was looking for a different Christmas checklist that I used last year, but I can't find it right now -- anyway, what I did was to write the different tasks on green index cards, and divided them into weeks, and every day I would try to make progress on the different tasks).

For academics

• Most of the stuff will stay the same, but I thought I would have Kieron read Geraldine MacCaughrean's Jesse Tree and go over Madeleine L'Engle's Glorious Impossible.
• He can also do the Snow lapbook. ...maybe now or maybe in January, depending on how the other things go.
• The littlies -- I will try to get a list of craft-y type projects for them --which Kieron can do too.
  

For liturgical year/family life:

• I think Helen's post is a great place to start (see above) -- so organized, with all the feast days, and beautiful, too.
• I found this December calendar in pdf with various secular occasions contained.
  
• And here is the Catholic Culture December calendar, too.

The theme -- preparing for Christmas and a New Year, and giving to others.

Details remain to be worked out. But the sick children have been on my mind.

Note:

Advents in our family tend to be "lived" rather than celebrated because almost every December we have a child in the hospital. (See Christmas Vigil and A Bit More on Advent for the 2005 and 2006 ponderings on this) Plus, I'm not really a home-decorating or practical-life type person. And I come from a very devout but slightly austere Christian tradition. My mom's efforts, admirably, were bent towards simplifying rather than elaborating Christmas. I remember hymns, once-a-year fancy cookies, beautiful Christmas classical missae on the stereo, an Advent calendar and a simple creche. That sufficed.

For all those reasons we tend not to have built up very complex Advent celebrations. Which is fine, of course -- it's not an obligation of the Faith -- but I think it would be nice, if we don't have a medical issue this year, to reflect upon and contemplate the season, and some simple activities and traditions can be conducive to that.

More resources and thoughts:

• Last year I started a simple Liturgical Year cyber-notebook. It didn't go much further than starting it and adding some links, but I am hoping to go back through it and pull out some of the things that we didn't get around to last year. (Here is a link to the paper Lit Year notebooks I made last year -- I still have to get them out this year) .
• Here's a bunch of Christmas booklists I collected... including a list of our Christmas bookshelf. (We have a few more books than that, and I collected a couple more last year, but that's a partial list).
• And Cay's idea for an Advent Grab Bag. This is one possible way to work through all the immensity of resources out there without getting too overwhelmed.
• Two more from Virginia Knowles: Advent Family Nights, and Christmas Treasury.
  

This post is getting away from me so I had better close now. Today is the day Liam, my oldest, comes home for Thanksgiving break. Off to prepare, and rejoice!