December 1st is almost here and I don't know where November went!
There are so many lovely homemade DIY advent calendars on pinterest that it makes me feel kinda lame for using our store bought wooden one. But, it's quite cute and we like it. We purchased it last year on sale, I've had to reglue some of the knobs that haphazardly fell off for no apparent reason. It makes me glad I didn't purchase it for the full price, which was a whopping $60 bucks, we paid $20.
One of my favorite DIY advent calendar ideas is this one, where you wrap 25 christmas-themed books and then unwrap one each day and read it. I counted how many christmas books we have, and we don't have near that many yet! We will have to work on collecting some and maybe we can do that next year.
Do you need ideas for what to put in your christmas countdown calendar this year? This is what we came up with.
Using some top notes from Paper Dozen, I decorated one side using christmas stickers and stencils. On the other side, I wrote down one activity per card.
Next, Sophie helped place one in each drawer. After she was done, I folded up some hidden picture pages from a highlights book and stuck them in a few of the drawers for an extra surprise.
1. Go ice skating
2. Color a christmas picture
3. Read a christmas storybook
4. Wrap a present
5. Make a christmas card for a friend
6. Do a christmas tree math activity
7. Have a christmas tea party
8. Take a drive to see christmas lights
9. Make a handmade gift
10. Draw and Decorate your own Snowman
11. Make a christmas craft
12. Make gift tags
13. Count Share savings and pick a charity (Sophie has a money bank with three sections: Spend, Save & Share)
14. Make a snow dome
15. Listen to christmas music & dance!
16. Make a snowflake craft
17. Make beeswax dipped glitter pinecones
18. Play a game
19. Watch a christmas movie
20. Make a christmas reindeer craft
21. Have a puppet show
22. Make snowball coconut cookies
23. Make warm honey coconut "cocoa"
24. Christmas savenger hunt
And on a few of them, I wrote little "clues" that we can read to Sophie to see if she can guess the activity.
Do you do an advent calendar? If so, what are you doing this year?