Kindness Elves

I love this idea from Anna at The Imagination Tree! It's a twist on the Elf on the Shelf idea, in Anna's own words" Create a new tradition for Christmas with the Kindness Elves, an alternative to the popular Elf on the Shelf idea, and place the focus instead on positive, character-building activities for kids. Teaching love, kindness and gratitude with a hope to raise kids who move away from the “entitlement” attitude which pervades our modern generation."

We don't 'do' Santa for the same reasons outlined in the post but I love this so much that we're adding this to the list of exciting things we're doing in the lead up to Christmas but calling ours Advent Helpers (a name I borrowed from one of Anna's readers). Not only is it a fantastic learning tool but it's a cheap way to enhance the magic of Christmas, I'm just using some gnomes my brother gave me as our 'elves'. :)

Here's the link to the article: http://theimaginationtree.com/2013/11/alternative-elf-on-shelf-tradition-kindness-elf.html

And here's our special little advent helpers standing by the candle of Hope waiting eagerly for Squiggles and Bubbles to wake up: