Advent at ASA

This past Sunday was the start to a new liturgical year and the Advent season! During Advent at ASA, all students, toddler through 8th grade, participate in various activities to enter into the liturgical season and to prepare for Christmas.

Our Early Childhood students are creating a hallway Advent wreath. Students traced their hands on green construction paper for assembling the wreath. Then classrooms are decorating the candles and flames together each week. You can see the first advent candle in the picture above. This wreath will provide a visual for students as they countdown the weeks to Christmas. The preschool students will also have a small Christmas caroling event on December 13th. They hope to video the event and share it with the entire ASA community.

Our K-8 students are joining together for weekly Advent prayers and reflection activities. Each week they will read an Advent reflection as a class, individually write a response to the reflection on purple paper, and then link the papers to make a chain for their classroom door or hallway. All students have prayer buddies that they will be praying and making cards for, and all classes will also share Christmas carols with each other. Lastly, they will celebrate the Feast of St. Nicholas with a treat and prayer card. 

ASA encourages all families to find a way to celebrate Advent at home too. Families could complete the daily activity on the advent calendar sent home last week, spend time listening to the advent Spotify playlist that St. Alphonsus Religious Education Office created, or find their own Advent tradition. The Office of Catholic Schools also shared additional Advent resources for families in their most recent blog post on catholicschools4u.org.

We pray for all our families, parishioners, and students to have an advent session that gives hope, joy, and peace!