Worshiping and Giving Gifts with the Wise Men (Advent Week 4)

Matthew 2:11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.


During our fourth week of advent, our theme is Celebrate!  For this day's activities I wanted to focus on the reaction of the wise men to Christ.  We started by talking about what worship means.  It's tough sometimes to bring this down to kid-level, so I decided to go back to our Thanksgiving verse, Psalm 100.  We sat together and did the motions and recited the verse, saying it to God.

Then we talked about gift giving: they're on top of this topic.  Next year, I'd like to incorporate the idea that what we give God for Christmas is ourselves and our lives, but we'd already done activities around that idea earlier in the month, so I decided instead to let this be about giving gifts to show others love.

Earlier this year I want a little kooky preserving fruit, so we had yummy pints of apple and pear butter to share.  We'd packaged them up during our Giving and Serving week of advent, but never got them delivered.  To make the kids feel more invested in the gift-giving, we also had decorated and packaged cinnamon-applesauce ornaments that they had made.

Papa took the kids to deliver canned goodies and ornaments to all the neighbors.