Activity Advent Calendar

Years ago when I lived in Tucson, I bought an advent calendar house.  I was so excited the first year I got it, and was so disappointed.  For some reason when I bought it, I imagined opening the doors each day to see what surprise was left for me, not thinking that as an adult no one fills it for me.  After eight years of moving around the country with the advent calendar in storage at Oma's house, I am finally using it again.  And it is exciting.  Although I don't get to open the doors, I get to watch the girls get so excited about doing it every morning.  And it is something wonderful to see.

 

I made a list of things I wanted to do this month with them and looked online for more ideas.  Then I wrote the ideas on slips of green paper.  To start I filled day one through day four, but it took me about 5 minutes on day one to realize that was a mistake.  The girls opened all of the doors and found the chocolates behind door two.  So now the last thing I do before going to bed is fill it for the next day.  This makes it nice because I can decide what to do based on what I feel like doing the next day and whether we have all the supplies.  If I'm tired and don't want to do a big project the next day, we watch a movie or they get a piece of chocolate.  Another thing making this easy on me is that they can't read yet. So if I wake up in the morning and don't feel up to doing what I planned, I just tell them something else is written (going to enjoy that while I can, since they will be reading it themselves one of these days).

 

This is roughly what we have done so far:


Day 1: Read a new Christmas book (pop up Twas the Night Before Christmas)

Day 2: Chocolate

Day 3: Watch Miracle on 34th Street

Day 4: Bake Cookies (Ina Garten's Rugelach)

Day 5: Learn a Christmas Carol (Frosty the Snowman) 

Day 6: Put up the Felt Christmas Tree

 

Day 7: Make Paper Chain Garlands

Day 8: Paint Snowflake Boxes (Baby M got to squish paint in a bag)

Day 9: Quarters

Day 10: Drink Hot Chocolate

Day 11: Make Cookies (we actually made fudge instead)

Day 12: Make Salt Dough Ornaments

Day 13: Read a new Christmas book (thank you, Connie, the girls loved the books you sent)

Day 14: Paint Salt Dough Ornaments

 
Also on our list are painting pinecones green and decorating them as trees, cutting out paper snowflakes, doing painted handprint or footprint pictures, along with watching A Christmas Story, and baking more cookies. As they get older I'll try to incorporate some service projects into it too.  This year we donated a toy to an organization that gives them to families in need, but the girls didn't really get it. 

This activity advent has been a nice way to celebrate the season and much more fun and healthier than just a piece of chocolate everyday.