Preparing for Advent {Make Your Own Advent Calendar: Part 3}

{Only 13 days left until December 1^{st -} how's your calendar coming along?  There's still time to get started!  Click here for Part 1 or Part 2 of this series...}

Dinner over, leftovers in the fridge, dishes washed, kids in bed, Christmas candle lit… Time to get back to work!

Make Your Own Advent Calendar: Part 3

All your manger scene pieces finished?  Great!  You're ready to start on your title and final spacing.

Getting Started

Gather your materials:

• felt for title letters
• paper patterns for title letters
• velcro, cut into small squares
• craft glue or hot glue hue

Title

1. Cut out your title letters.  {Hint: Be sure to reverse your paper letter patterns when you trace them onto your felt; that way your black marker lines won't show when you turn them right side up to glue them on your background.}

2. Glue your title letters onto your background, using craft glue or a hot glue gun.

Final Spacing

1. Lay all your finished felt pieces into your manger scene, the way you want it to look.  Mark the bottom with a pen or scrap piece of felt.  Then move all the pieces one by one down to the bottom of your background, making sure they all fit.  Leave enough space near each piece to write in each day's number.  

2. Reassemble your manger scene.  Glue each corresponding velcro spot onto your background.  (I used two patches each for the stable and the double angels.)  

{Hint: Make sure to glue the bristly side of the velcro onto your characters and the soft side onto the background, so when you roll up the background to store it, it won't stick to itself.  Plus, the bristly side of the velcro on the backs of the characters sticks onto the felt itself in the storage spots, so you don't need a second set of velcro spots.}

3. Number each corresponding velcro spot for the manger scene and the character storage places with black Sharpie marker.  Where the character required two velcro spots, I either wrote the same number under both spots, or put the number in between the two spots.

(Black doesn’t show up that well on my dark green background, but I tried to make the numbers big enough for my preschoolers to find, and I’d prefer the numbers on the final manger scene to sort of blend in or be covered up by the end anyway.) 

Part 3 complete!  Great job!  You're almost done!

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{For a copy of the Christmas story divided into 25 pieces, email me at carolyn@carolynbroughton.com}

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How are your calendars coming along?  There’s still time to grab some felt and start cutting and gluing… Remember, your calendar can look any way you want it to, ornate or simple - the point is to have something Christ-centered to help your children anticipate Jesus’ birth and learn the Christmas story!  

Leave a comment with your progress… I’d love to see a photo when it’s done!