Advent Calendar 2014 Activity – Day 1: God Is With Us Through Creation

Today is the start of this year’s advent calendar activities which are based around the theme “Immanuel – ‘God is with us’”.  (The name given to Jesus by the angel Gabriel when he appears in a dream to Joseph to prophesy Christ’s birth (Matthew 1:23)).  Each day we will be doing an activity that celebrates the ways in which God is present with us.

“…all things have been created through him and for him.  He is before all things and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17) 

I love the holistic spirit of this passage - Jesus is not simply a baby in a manger or a man dying on a cross, but a Person through whom everything finds its purpose and connection with everything else.

My favourite room in our house is the conservatory.  It is full of light and enables us to have a close-up encounter with the animals and plants in the garden without actually being out there and suffering the cold.  This morning I arranged for Wugs to put out some bird seed and nuts to entice more wildlife into the garden.  This simple activity taught him a couple of things: hand control when pouring the food into the containers and an appreciation for animals, who are worthy of our care and attention. 

We went back into the conservatory expecting to see a garden full of squirrels and birds, but all morning we observed only two magpies and a robin in a tree.  This could have something to do with the fact that whenever a bird flew anywhere near the conservatory, Wugs and Dooey would rush to the window and holler “BIRD!!” at the top of their voices so the birds ran away!  I tried to make a game out of being quiet and walking slowly, but this inevitably failed.

                              

Well, as the birds wouldn't come to us, we created our own.  I opened up some air-drying clay and a couple of packets of feathers (new sensory materials for Wugs and Dooey) and helped mould their birds’ bodies and faces with Wugs adding the eyes and feathers (strengthening his fine motor skills).  The birds didn’t look quite like the birds I’ve seen in our garden or seen anywhere else for that matter, but the boys recognised them as such. 

What we used:

Bird feeder

Bird seed and nuts

Air-drying clay

Feathers

Peppercorns (eyes)   

It seems the lonely robin in the tree made quite an impression on Wugs.  This evening, he was asking about the robin, so we looked up a couple of videos on You Tube of robins singing before he went to sleep.  Hopefully the robin will be back in the garden tomorrow so he can see the real thing.