Count Down to Christmas with a Works of Mercy Chain

Happy New (Liturgical) Year!

If life has thrown you some unexpected curve balls lately and you feel as unprepared for Advent this year as I do, perhaps the simple freebie I am offering today can help.

Let Our 2023 Advent Chain Help Your Family Live the Works of Mercy This Advent

We just took the first link down from our annual Advent chain tonight, so I thought I would share the Advent Chain printable we made for it here in case you're looking for some quick inspiration for an easy way to count down to Christmas while keeping your family's hearts focused on sharing Christ's love through Works of Mercy.

To use the printable as we do, just print the document out. Then, color or paint all of the backsides of the strips violet, except for the final one that says "Celebrate! Christ has come!" which is the Christmas strip and left white. (Alternately, print on purple paper.)

After that, cut the pages into strips and use tape or staples to make a looped paper chain. 

Hang the chain up and - viola! - you and yours are ready to count down to Christmas while focusing on the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.

Alternatively, you could browse the document for ideas for making a count-down chain tailored to your family or put the strips out with a Giving Manger  (which I reviewed previously) or homemade Sacrifice Manger (like the one pictured in 6 Things to Do Before Christmas).

Know You're Not Alone If You're Just Starting to get Ready for Advent Even If Advent Has Already Begun

And if you don't have an Advent Wreath set out next to Advent reading, Jesse Ornaments ready to go, or any of your personal Advent traditions rolling out yet, take heart! You are not alone.

Until tonight, the only thing we had out was a St. Andrew Christmas Novena Prayer Rebus Bookmark that we made years ago and just happened to find yesterday when cleaning, and currently, besides the addition of our annual Advent Chain, that remains true.

For you see, last week that old saying that life is what happens when you're making other plans became a reality here again.

A week ago today, I had plans to be well-prepared for Advent by last night. As a part of my plans, since family has been making paper Advent chains in order to count down to Christmas for years now, I had asked my youngest child to start listing Works of Mercy ideas that he would like us to include in our 2023 chain in his binder so that we might make them into a chain later in the week.

Then, the week happened and with it came a major car repair, a printer issue, a plumbing issue, an urgent care visit, an internet outage, another car repair, a roof replacement, and more.

Yes. All of this. In one week. 

So, before I knew it, Advent was upon us, and, instead of being prepared and starting Advent with morning Mass and traditions, my husband and I decided to celebrate the onset of Advent by giving everyone in our household the gift of waking up naturally and going to a noon Mass.

On the way to and from Mass, we prayed the Rosary, and - having been prompted by the aforementioned Christmas Novena bookmark that reappeared yesterday - we caught up on our Novena, too.

Then, the first day of Advent unfolded for us, without many of our New (Liturgical) Year except for praying the Christmas Novena and getting our simple Advent Chain ready.

And that's okay. Totally okay. 

Christ did not come to us in the manger because we were perfect. He does not come to us in the Eucharist because we are perfect. And He won't be coming to us again because of our earthly perfection.

In fact, Christ comes to us in our mess and our brokenness. He meets where we are at. He loves us. He gives us so much grace and mercy and asks us simply to love Him and let Him save us.

That's incredible. That's what this season is about: waiting in joyful anticipation for Christ's coming. 

The only thing we really need to journey well through Advent is a heart, mind, and soul turned toward Christ, awaiting Him.  

I'd love to hear how you're doing this Advent. If you have prayer intentions you would like others and me to pray for, please feel free to leave them in a comment. If you want to share some of your own family's traditions for journeying through Advent, feel free to share that, too. 

May God bless you with a joyful Advent.

Count Down to Christmas with Works of Mercy

 

As we enter the fourth week of Advent this year, I smile, knowing that in but a few hours little feet will pad down the hall making a bee-line for the living room window, atop which our Advent Chain hangs.  I cannot believe how few links are left on it and how quickly this Advent has passed.

I feel as though we just celebrated the church's new year and that I am woefully unprepared for Christmas still.  Yet, here we are, but a few days away from the commemoration of Christ's coming.  Thankfully, Our Lord comes to us regardless of how prepared we feel.  Double thanks that through the tradition of our Advent Chain, our family is at least a bit more spiritually prepared to celebrate His coming.  For this year we decided to focus the things we wrote down on each link of our chain on the Works of Mercy.  Mercy shared always makes folks more prepared.

Why Mercy?

Even before our family had heard that Pope Francis had declared a Jubilee of Mercy, we had personally been called to live and learn more about mercy in our home and local homeschool community.

Our family virtue studies and chats had begun to be framed by the Works of Mercy.  Then, a late-summer conversation with local homeschoolers resulted in the idea of forming a Works of Mercy Club, which did not actually kick off until October.  

Following suit, a recent fair project the kids did on Paying it Forward included "secret evangalization" when the kids chose to write Works of Mercy as examples of ways to "pay it forward" despite the fact that the fair organizer had requested project topics not be centered upon religion nor politics.  (With my kids, religion is so central to identity it cannot simply be "avoided", so they chose to simply weave it into a project technically centered on something else)  Thus, it just seemed natural to build our Advent chain around the Works of Mercy.

The Making of the Chain 

Before making the physical Advent Chain this year, the children and I brainstormed ways we might offer works or Mercy to others this Advent season.  Basically, the children suggested ways to simply live Works of Mercy and I captured their thoughts on a document.  Then, as usual, I printed the document out so, whenever the children wanted to, they could use it for copywork to prepare their chain.

Nina eagerly did most of the copywork this year...
 

... with a little help from Luke...
 

Then, Nina assembled the chain and held it up so I could hang it.
 

Now, daily, the kids pull down a link, and, if they decide to perform the Work of Mercy written on it immediately, they hang the opened link on our Jesse Tree. 
 

 If it seems that the Work of Mercy might be more suitable for another day, they put the opened link in the middle of the Advent wreath on our kitchen table as a reminder.
 

Easy, beautiful, practical.  The children love our tradition of counting down the days until Christmas with their simple purple-and-pink paper chain.  They offered wonderful ideas to write on the chain, eagerly assembled and help hung it, and, now, anxiously await when each will have turns to pull down a link to read so that they may may act upon whatever is suggested on it.  

Our Works of Mercy Advent Chain is such a great way to keep us focused on giving, not getting, this season and on preparing our hearts for the coming of Christ.

A Daily Dose of Gratitude for Mom 

As an extra added bonus, this year's Advent Chain has also offered me a daily breath of "Ahhh, it's happening at last..." 

What's happening?  The children's growing ability to be patient!

For, this year, the children decided to go in a cycle from youngest-to-oldest with daily link-pulling, and have been awesome about waiting each day for the "my turn" child to wake and pull a link down.  It has been so cute to see early risers eagerly, yet patiently, wait for a sibling to wake in order to pull links.  It has been equally darling to see bigger siblings helping littler ones physically get to the chain.

Thus, this year, more than any prior year, I am especially struck by the way the kids have been using our Advent Chain.  Joy and gratitude fill my heart each time I witness the virtues of self-control, patience, and charity being lived by children in conjunction with our Works of Mercy Advent chain!  (Now if we all could figure out how to transfer these virtues to every aspect of our lives...)

So What Works Have the Kids Been Acting Upon?

One of the kids' favorite Works of Mercy this Advent has been to "give a gift to a needy person".  They brought a donation to My Brother's Keeper and, then, as a family we volunteered to "shop" and wrap gifts for for a needy family at the Santa's Workshop there.  In fact, the kids loved doing this so much, they asked me to squeeze in another visit to help before Christmas, which I have scheduled.

Other ideas they came up with were:

• Pray for all veterans.

• Give a secret gift to someone on your street.

• Give a secret gift to someone in your house. 

• Make breakfast for Mom. 

• Pray for (a specific family) as they mourn their loss. 

• Hug someone in your family to show forgiveness. 

• Say an extra prayer for Eddie’s soul. 

• Say an extra prayer for (friend). 

• Say an extra prayer for Adrienne’s soul.  

• Say an extra pray for the Eagle Scout that died. 

• Go to confession. 

• Offer food for the poor at Mass. 

• Give cookies to our neighbors. 

• Make a meal for someone who could use one. 

• Give a hot drink to someone outside. 

• Sort out our coats and give some away. 

• Give some of our outgrown clothes to friends. 

• Give some of our outgrown clothes to the poor. 

• Put extra money in the baby bottle donation for church. 

• Make cards for people in the nursing home. 

• Go Christmas caroling at a nursing home. 

• Visit (an elderly neighbor). 

• Make Mommy and Daddy lunch. 

• Put money in the St. Vincent de Paul box. 

• Go to the cemetery and pray.

To come up with these, I read an "official" list of Works of Mercy to the kids and they brainstormed specific related ways they could share mercy with others this Advent season.  As the children dictated their ideas to me, I was impressed by the fact that they remembered to balance between family, friends, local community members, strangers, and souls in purgatory.  In the past, we purposefully rotated between ways we could be kind to family, friends, those we know, and those we do not and, this year, it seems, doing so just became natural.  My hope is that consciously choosing to live Works of Mercy, large and small, will likewise become a natural part of how our family thinks and lives.  In fact, I pray mercy makes itself a greater priority for all, everywhere, as this coming year unfolds.

May mercy work in you and through you!

The Countdown is On: Making Paper Advent Chains

As a part of our first day of Advent plans yesterday, we made our annual Advent Chain -- a simple and fun way for the children and us to countdown the days until we celebrate the birth of Jesus while also focusing on how He lives within each of us.

The Ideal:  Two Montessori Trays for Making Paper Advent Chains

Flashback:  Nina concentrates as she cuts strips last year.

I had imagined setting up two Montessori trays this year to make our Advent Chain:

• one with purple paper, a ruler, kid-sized scissors and a pencil, so that the children could draw and cut straight lines to make our Advent chain strips,
• and, another with the cut paper strips, a pen and the children’s ideas for serving others written out on strips that the children could be used for copywork.

The Real:  A More Free Flow Activity to Transition to Quiet, Focused Time

Drawing Straight Lines

However, Sundays are a bit too free-flow around here for such structure, so, yesterday, we kept the essence of the project, but not the arrangement.  Instead of working from pre-prepared Montessori trays, we set about the project with a more impromptu nature.

After some outdoor family time, Jack needed a nap and Luke and Nina needed a semi-structured activity to help them transition from boisterous outdoor play to quiet (i.e. brother needs a nap) indoor pursuits.  So, upon spying some construction paper I’d purchased for our Advent lessons sitting on the kitchen counter top, I decided that preparing our Advent Chain would be a perfect activity!

Out came a ruler, some writing utensils and the adult scissors, which were all readily available in the kitchen.  Down sat Luke and Nina.  And, the project was underway.

Nina and Luke concentrated on drawing lines and cutting along them to make paper strips for our chain.  They asked if they could make pink ones as well as purple ones this year, which I was happy to agree to.  By doing so, I was able to weave in some patterning discussion – asking the kids what type of pattern we should make and, then, proceeding to help create an A-B-A-B pink-and-purple chain.

Since the children were in more of a construction mood than a writing one, I forwent the copywork idea I had originally had for our Advent Chain project this year and simply wrote out the children’s ideas on each chain link myself.  As I did, I smiled at the works of service that they had come up with during our Christ the King liturgical tea last week.  During the tea, we had discussed how Christ the King, unlike many worldly rulers, leads by serving.  Then, the children had brainstormed ways that we, as a family, might serve others during Advent.  The breadth of their ideas – and the depth of some of them – impressed me as I rewrote them on our Advent chain.

The First Link Accomplished

"We did this!"

Finally, we hung the chain up high in our living room, so Jack won’t be apt to tear it apart, and Nina excitedly took down the first link – an idea the children had come up with last week which I had purposely put at the end of the chain as the children had already accomplished its suggestion today. 

“Give stuff to other people,”  it said.  At Mass, they had given an extra copy of one of our Christmas board books to a family with three young children.  This small gesture of kindness was a HUGE thing for them, in my opinion, as it demonstrated growth in areas of character development and social skills that they have been working on:  not hoarding things we don’t need, sharing, approaching others and getting their attention with politeness, speaking up with people they might not know, etc.  Not to mention it started our Advent off right with a focus on Faith, Others, then Selves.

Undoubtedly, the next 22 days will be filled with similar growth as the children work to honor all the ideas they brainstormed on Christ the King day.

Academic Links for the Next 22 Days

 

To keep us accountable to our focus of service – as well as to add an easy dimension to our Math work this month – I made a simple bar graph for the kids and I to fill out daily. 

Additionally, we will use the chain for practice with counting, addition, subtraction, concepts of time, etc.

Since some of the ideas the children brainstormed involve gifting things to others, practical life skills will be inspired aplenty.  Likewise, there will be handwriting practice as the children write notes and make cards.

And, of course, Luke will work on decoding as he attempts to read some of the links.

For Posterity

Nina with Last Year's Advent Chain

Since I already tossed the paper from the kids’ original brainstorm into the recycling bin and the idea are now hidden inside each chain link loop, I cannot share what the kids’ ideas were this year just yet.  However, for posterity, I would like to list some of the ideas that the kids came up with for last year’s chain.  For it is not from the wind that they get their bad habit of squirreling things away unnecessarily.  In recent weeks, I found a stack of last year’s purple strips that I had kept for who knows what reason.  They are now headed to recycling, too, but first, let me share some of them:

• “Make a card for someone.”
• “Paint a picture for someone.”
• “Hug someone.”
• “Visit a neighbor.”
• “Play ball with Jack.”
• “Let Mommy have computer time.”
• “Make Luke’s bed.”
• “Rub someone.”  (i.e. offer a back massage at nap or bedtime)
• “Offer a compliment.”
• “Say something nice.”
• “Tell Daddy he runs faster than us.”
• “Tickle Jack.”
• “Make books.  Read them to see if they’re good and give them away.  If they’re not good, don’t give them away.”
• “Make a bird house.”
• “Protect the birds by saying, ‘Shoo, squirrel, shoo!’”
• “Kiss someone.”
• “Feed the birds.”
• “Pick a room and do a ten-minute cleaning.”
• “Clean all the doorknobs and light switches.”
• “Make a welcome sign.”
• “Give our neighbor’s food.”
• “Let Jack play with us.”
• “Make Mommy’s bed.”
• “Skip computer time to play with the kids.”
• “Let Nina go first at something.”

As I recall, I helped the kids brainstorm some of these ideas last year by asking how we might be kind to one another, help people in our neighborhood, help the poor, prepare our home for unexpected guests, etc.  From there, they came up with the ideas.

Flashback to Last Year:  Luke Making Our Advent Chain

Do you make Advent, or Christmas Countdown, Chains?  If so, do you have children generate their own ideas, do you come up with them or do you use a pre-made printable?  What is the focus of your chain?  Service?  Fun?  Prayer?  Family time?  Some combinations of all of them?  We’d love to hear your thoughts.

 This post is being shared over at Montessori Monday.  Click on over to be inspired by many home and school ideas.