Advent Calendar Activities

Being confined gives me more opportunity to blog...

The kids want to have an Advent calendar this year. The only trouble with that is that we celebrate the twelve days of Christmas by opening one package every morning. A couple of years ago when we had an Advent calendar (by Playmobil) it was just too many days of opening presents.

Then today (or yesterday) I received Kids Craft Weekly in my email inbox. This issue had a link to an Advent Activity Calendar from the Kiddley archives. This is it, folks! Essentially every day there is some small-ish suggested activity.

I have made a list of activities, but I need a few more, particularly if the weather is as nasty as it often is. Here's my working list (some are from the list in the link and some are my own):

  1. Paint everyone's toenails
  2. Make hot chocolate
  3. Bake cookies
  4. Build a fort
  5. Have a play bath
  6. Give everyone a wild hairstyle
  7. Go walk in the woods
  8. Take pictures of each other
  9. Play UNO (even Clara plays UNO)
  10. Make a giant picture
  11. Make paper snowflakes
  12. Write letters to far away friends
  13. Make a wind boat
  14. Thank someone for being nice
  15. Make a shining star
  16. Have pancakes for dinner
  17. Make fingerprint people and animals
  18. String cranberries for the tree outside (maybe not a good idea since there is a family of raccoons living next door)
  19. Dress fancy for dinner
  20. Play soccer
What else friends? I need a few more ideas!

We do also light Advent lanterns every night during Advent and we have a liturgy that we say together that David came up with a couple of years ago.

Comments

Keely said…
Love this idea! Followed the link trail and got some ideas from other people's lists, too.

-make paper chains
-make Peanut Butter Pinecones for birds
-Make salt dough ornaments
-Write a winter poem
-"To brighten someone's day, find toys to give away!"
-Sing Christmas Carols
-Walk/drive around to see Christmas lights
-Fill the table with candles and oil lamps and light them all at once!
-Make origami tree decorations
-Take old towels/linens to the animal shelter
-Practice (anonymous)random acts of kindness
Nancy said…
We did the 12 days of Christmas also - opening 1 gift/day - most people thought we were nuts, but we felt the kids appreciated their gifts much more. Glad to hear someone else does this too.
I like your Advent ideas also.
Nadia said…
I love this idea! I'm off to find envelopes and ideas! I shamelessly copied this idea onto my blog.

Nadia
Scandalous!
Nadia said…
A couple I have added so far:

~Making cards for the neighbours in our complex
~Getting our Christmas tree
~Sorting thru our toys and giving some away
~Making teacher presents
Anonymous said…
We are doing something like the same this year--37 days of presents sort of defeats the general goal of making Christmas less about presents, no?

Some ideas I liked that involved even less planning (since 37 days of specific things to do sounds like it could be a little much for me too...):

--getting out the Christmas books
--getting the Christmas tree
--gathering supplies for making presents...

i.e. things are we going to be doing anyway

Hope you are feeling better!
Catherine

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