Happy second week of Advent! I hope you are having a prayerful season so far. I know I am caught up in the usual tricky balancing act of not letting all the Christmas hustle and bustle get in the way of my celebration of this season of expectant hope. Our Jesse trees at home and school are rapidly filling up with beautiful handmade ornaments (we are doing two a day to make up for the shortness of the season this year.) The advent candles are glowing, and I even had a chance to go to a women’s morning of prayer this Saturday.
This craft is designed as a take home for students- I know many families don’t celebrate Advent at home, so the goal behind this was to help affirm students in their own celebration of the season while giving them the tools to help their parents and siblings celebrate at home. Here’s what you’ll need for the party poppers:
4 toilet paper tubes
pink and purple tissue paper
ribbon
gift tags (I made ours from construction paper.)
quotes about hope, peace, joy and love (at least 7 of each- I had students bring in their favorites)
In the week of Thanksgiving students had to bring in a favorite quote about one of the themes (hope, peace, joy, love) printed at least five times. I allowed images, handwritten or typed. Students could get extra credit for doing extra quotes. We then cut all the quotes and organized them into bins. Students also had to bring their own 4 toilet paper tubes, although depending on class size and planning time, I might have been able to provide these.
Assembly took some time, but wasn’t all that complicated. Students stuffed each of their tubes with 7 quotes- one each day of that week of Advent. Then we wrapped and labeled the tubes- hope, peace and love were wrapped in purple tissue paper and joy in the pink. We tied the ends with ribbons and curled them nicely.
Then students brought all four poppers home so that each night at the diner table they could share one of their quotes with the family as a way of praying with the them of that week of Advent. Because this was our first year doing this project, there were definitely some things I would do differently, but overall I was really happy with the way the poppers turned out. Some of my more enterprising students wanted their poppers to really POP, so they looked up a way to do that with balloons. Next year I may include that in my supply list.
Here’s the finished product:
I hope you continue to have a great Advent! Tune in next week for some ideas on how to use the O Antiphons in your classroom or home celebrations.
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Peace!
