Christmas is coming - time to get collecting!!!!

Christmas 2014 for my Compassion Children

With October well on the way it is time to send off Christmas things to my Compassion children around the world. My children range in age from 3 years old to 20 years old. They come from 23 countries around the world and speak many languages with the majority speaking Spanish.

I tend to start collecting throughout the year little things which I com across in shops and on the net. I find mazes, word puzzles, paper decorations and general ideas on the web. Our Christian book shops here and on line are a great source of stickers, book marks and little books for those that speak English. The Oriental Trading Company have great  range of paper things to send but for Australians it is very expensive postage to get them to our country. Word.com.au sell some of the items from Oriental trading at a better price than importing them.



Paper tree decorations I made
 

Each year I try to make some little thing for each child. This year I used pre cut Christmas shapes which I decorated with a punch heart and silver pen.



For the middle age group

For the middle age group of children I found some Christmas bells to make from paper on the Cannon web site. A star decoration, mazes, colouring pages, stickers and their photo with a Christmas blessing and photos of my family around them. Stickers from oriental trading and a letter.









For the younger children

The younger children are always the easier with so many options for them. This collection is made from stickers, paper Christmas heart decoration from Cannon, puzzles, dot to dot, mazes, fold out Christmas tree, colour and make your own Christmas scene, jigsaw, book mark, photo Christmas card, and a letter.






For the older children

The older children are always the hardest to find things for, especially for those who don't speak English. Cannon has Christmas decorations which are quite difficult but have good diagrams on how to make them without being able to read the instructions. Difficult mazes, photos, paper decorations made here and a letter are on their way to these children.

For the very little ones in preschool  or younger

 



The tiny ones are the easiest of all with so many Christian home school sites with a huge range of early education activities linked to Christmas, these include matching activities, early number, drawing and cutting skills, jigsaws and puzzles. To this I added stickers, colouring in sheets, picture books of the Christmas story and the child's photo in Christmas message and letter. 

For my older English speaking child I added a devotion, study guides, sermon extracts, book marks, cross words and word finds etc. in English which were based on the Christmas story and Christian celebrations of Jesus birth.

Hope this gives some ideas for others and that sponsors will take a few moments and write to their sponsor child. If you don't have time to collect things for your chid then just a card with a short message and a few stickers will bring untold joy to a child, them just knowing their sponsor is thinking of them and has taken the time to write to them is a blessing we can not measure but know it makes a great difference to a child far away.

God bless your Christmas preparations, may this season be a blessed one for you and your family.

Janelle