Advent Calendar Experiences

December is upon us. I’m so excited for all the holiday fun I am planning for the girls this year.

For the first time we are going to use an Advent calendar. I have debated using one in the past. I’ve been hesitant because I know often folks place small candies or toys in the calendar’s pockets and I just wasn’t interested in doing that. Small toys aren’t a great idea in my house with such little ones, and I am just not really interested in giving them candy every day in December, knowing that the sweets will be pretty free-flowing this month anyway.

But I have always kind of wanted to have an Advent calendar, because I think the count down is a fun visual way for little ones to anticipate Christmas. Plus it would be a fun addition to our daily calendar time. So this year I looked and looked for one I liked.

Then I found this calendar:

I love that the pockets of this calendar have little “ornaments” in them so that each day the girls can pull one out and velcro it to the tree at the top. Even if I did nothing else with the calendar, that would be a fun count down to do.

But of course, I wanted to do something else.

One thing I love that I’ve seen around is the Advent calendar that uses an experience each day rather than a toy or a treat.

Yeah. We’re doing that.

I haven’t quite come up with 24 things for the pockets yet, but tomorrow we’re having a movie night and watching “Rudolp the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to start. Here are the other activities we have so far:

Shop for gifts for less fortunate kids (our local police and Salvation Army sponsor a program and we’ve signed up to shop for a family)

Make handprint ornaments

Go for a drive to look at Christmas lights (a local park has a wonderful display)

Paint and bake ceramic ornaments

Open our special ornaments and hang them on the tree

Play in the oatmeal sensory bin (the ornament and oatmeal activities will all be during this next week, because our letter of the week is “O for Ornament”)

Open a new movie and watch it during our drive to Grandma and Grandpa’s house (may do this one twice, once for our trip to Kentucky and once for our trip to the Farm)

Have a tea party (my Mom has my tea set from when I was a little girl at her house)

Open and read a new Christmas book (I will probably put this one in there more than once, as I have several new books on order)

Make and decorate Christmas cookies

Have a special birthday lunch for Daddy

Ice Cream Sundaes

Celebrate Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle G, Aunt A, and cousins (the calendar will easily fold and make the trip with us to Kentucky next week and to the Farm for the weekend before Christmas)

Go to story time and see Santa

Make hot chocolate

Make Santa craft (classic – glue face parts, beard, hat, etc, and then glue cotton balls on for beard and hat trim)

Have a Christmas Carol dance party

Do Christmas tree craft (felt triangle for tree, then glue buttons on for ornaments)

That puts me at 22 if I do a new movie for each of our big trips and open a new Christmas book three times.

I’m not sure what else I’ll do. Maybe another craft. Maybe more baking. I know I can come up with two more things. I’ll play it by ear to figure out what else to include.

I’m excited to see what they think of this process. I’ll definitely keep you posted as it unfolds.