After seeing a lot of beautiful seasonal traditions on Instagram, I decided I wanted to try making a spiral with my kids this year. This activity leans more Waldorf-y than Montessori, but an Advent spiral can be a beautiful, hands-on and concrete manner of marking the days until Christmas.
We made a simple salt dough, rolled it out, baked it and painted. Typically candles are used to mark the passing of each day counting down to Christmas. We are doing a traditional Advent wreath with candles already, so I wanted a different, distinct activity; I used colored, wooden balls we had on hand.
The dough is really simple. All you need are the following ingredients:
- 2 cups flour
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup salt
- 1 tsp oil
Mix, form spiral, and add holes for whatever you want to use to mark the days: stones, seashells, beads, wooden balls, or of course candles. Bake at 350 for around 30-45 mins or so. Just keep an eye on it.
Afterward the kids painted it with acyclic paint followed up with a gloss. We painted ours purple in keeping with the liturgical colors and talked about Advent meaning coming, a time of waiting and preparing.
I enjoyed this activity and so did the kids. Click here for our other Advent preparations.
We have a swirl made of wood that we use. But we use it in the opposite direction, starting outside and going inside. Our’s has a candle as well that we move along.