An Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way

We are excited to announce the launch of our newest family Advent devotional resource: An Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way! Click here to ORDER NOW!

This is our fourth year of providing families with a resource for engaging their children in faith formation at home during the Advent season. Our Illustrated Advent for Families and Illustrated Lent for Families have been used by thousands of families around the world, and we’re looking forward to sharing this new edition.

It can be difficult to find meaningful ways to engage our families in faith formation. It can sometimes feel awkward, we don’t always know what to do, and sometimes we have a hard time talking about our own faith stories.

An Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way is one way to do that – to slow down, ask questions, have fun, be intentional about how you spend your time, and try new things. There are coloring pages for your children, but we’ve often found that parents enjoy coloring them as much (if not more…) as their children enjoy the coloring. There are simple but meaningful devotions for families to do throughout Advent, our Illustrated Ornament Set, and our Advent Calendar.

Keep reading to learn a bit more about the activities in this year’s edition, and to hear testimonials from people who have used our previous editions of Advent family resources.

Family Advent Devotional

This year, in our family Advent devotions, you will be introduced to prophets–or God’s messengers–who helped prepare God’s people for Jesus’ arrival. You will also encounter individuals who faced the unexpected, trusting in the promises of God for their lives, continuing to prepare for Jesus.

Incorporated into the devotion is a time for coloring the Illustrated Ornaments if you would like to do so, however that can also be used as a stand-alone activity.

These weekly devotionals are written so they can be used by children of all ages (and adults as well), and we believe you’ll find questions and discussion topics in each of the devotionals that will work for your children, no matter the age. Each devotion includes scripture, a brief reflection, and discussion questions, an activity a family can do over the week and a short prayer.

Coloring Pages

Obviously, we love coloring here at Illustrated Ministry. But it’s not just that we like getting messy with markers and crayons. It’s really the conversations that happen when you’re coloring that we treasure.

If you’ve used any of our products and resources before, you may have experienced some of these types of conversations with children. When they’re immersed in coloring, you’ll be amazed at what they will share with you.

Our coloring pages for this year’s Illustrated Advent for Families: Preparing the Way go along with the themes for our devotionals.

Illustrated Ornaments

This year, we invite you to create your own Illustrated Ornaments. Each week of Advent, you will have the opportunity to color an Advent Ornament as you read through the devotional materials.

We have put a lot of attention into these ornaments, and if you use nice card stock to print them out, we think they could be ornaments that you’d keep year after year. It is our hope that our Advent resources will deepen your faith and connection with God and your family as you journey together through Advent.

Advent Activities for Families

While many Advent calendars today come with the promise of chocolates or toys behind each of the numbered doors, this Advent calendar is a little different. Our Advent calendar is more of an activity calendar — activities that can help you get into the Advent and Christmas spirit. Some of these activities will be great for your kids to do by themselves—others will require the whole family. And there are some activities that require you to get out of your house and go into your community.

We think these activities will be a lot of fun for your kids and your family and maybe some of the prompts will cause you and your family to get creative and make up other activities on your own.

Each of the weeks of Advent has a different theme and focus, and we hope that this will provide you with meaningful ways to get into the Christmas spirit. Click here to ORDER NOW!

We hope you’ll take some time to check out An Illustrated Advent for Families, and let us know if you have any questions. If you’d like to download a sample of the resource to check out before you purchase, you can click here.