Wednesday, December 14, 2011

A Filipino Christmas

The Philippines is the only country in Asia that is mainly populated by Christians.  Christmas is a very festive time there and there is much focus on star of Bethlehem.  Stars are everywhere.  They are shown in windows, hung from doorways, even strung across streets from house to house.  People make large star lanterns called Parols to share with friends and neighbors.  (The name change between the types of peoples and the name of the islands is explained here.) 

We started out the evening with a book about stars! 

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What an adorable book (and horrible picture… but whatever).  The little owl follows the star to the baby Jesus and gets to see the baby and then go back and tell the star all about it.

After that book we read this one just for fun:

We spent the next two hours making all kinds of stars!  The main ones the kids loved were the ones made out of straws and tissue paper from the book Celebrating Christmas Around the World. (They love anything with pipe cleaners. Seriously!)

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The kids LOVED those stars! 

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Here are some more star making tutorials that we thought would be fun, but didn’t have time to make.  Perhaps another day:

Greek Paper Stars

Music Sheet Stars

Star Birdfeeders (would also work for Scandinavia)

Another cool paper star tute (not English, but really good pictures)

Cyan and Logan put theirs above our nativity scene from Greece and then we made some star soup with tiny Stelline pasta for dinner!

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As the starry night closed in, the kids and I went to bed with tummies full and some new fun crafting memories.

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