One of my ALL TIME favorite memories of Christmas was doing a family advent calendar. Whether it was calling Mammy to read a book, or fondue night, all of them have special meaning and purpose.
So I’m going to share with you some of the fun ideas we use and how I made our very own calendar too!
First of all, my mom is the OG of the Christmas advent calendar. She started it when we were just toddlers too and we still even do some of these as a big family today too. So I have to give credit to her for starting this!! And I also had her write a little about why she started it with us kids.
I wanted to start making new memories And have our own new traditions for our little family. December needed to be the month that we celebrated family and togetherness. I realized that Christmas wasn’t just about giving gifts to each other but celebrating the gift God gave us, each other. I also realized how fun it was for the kids to be able to wake up each day and find out what the new surprise was for the day! – MOM
Okay, so heres the good stuff! What we do is have either an activity or event that we do each day leading up to Christmas Day. A total of 25 days worth.
Some of these are bigger things such as going to a Christmas concert, or ice skating. And some of the smaller ones include cutting out snowflakes to hang around the house, or bringing the neighbors cookies. They’re all fun and meaningful but they won’t take up the same amount of time. So picking smaller things around the big events is a great place to start.
- Here’s a list of BIG EVENTS that we do:
- Local Christmas philharmonic orchestra
- Ice skating
- Mini golf
- Chopped (FOOD NETWORK STYLE) – explained HERE!
- Bowling
- $10 Mall shopping game – explained HERE!
- Christmas train
- Escape room
- Go look at Christmas lights
- Fondue night- explained HERE!
- Here’s a list of small activities that we do:
- Cut out snowflakes to hang around the house
- Being neighbors cookies
- Do “you’ve been jingled” – explained HERE!
- Spend $5 showing kindness to someone
- FaceTime an out of town relative to read a book too
- Go thru and donate toys and clothes
- Breakfast in bed
- Leave a treat for the mailman
- Do something nice intentionally for a sibling
- Call grandma just to make her day
These are all such fun things to do and don’t all require lots of prep either! So I hope this gives you some great ideas to do with your loved ones!
Alright so as for the calendar, here’s the scoop!
My mom handmade this Santa calendar when she started this tradition with us and so I took some inspiration from it when I made mine.
But, if you’re looking for a few simpler options you could have the kids flip over the card at each breakfast time, or put them face down in order in a box and they pick out the write date. or even string them with twine and cute little clothespins. Get creative, there are a lot of ways to do this.
But, if you are wanting to make one, here’s what I did. All it took was some Christmas fabric, a hot glue gun, kids stocking, and permanent marker (or puff paint works too).
I started by cutting one big piece for the back and then cut single strips just big enough to hem and fit little cards into. Then I hemmed the raw edges of each strip and set them like so on the back piece to be even width apart laid out. I then just measured how many days I needed per strip. I sewed down each measurement all the way down from top to bottom. Then for simpler finishing, I just hot glued the bottom of each little pocket.
Lastly, I just took an extra kid stocking that I had, cut the top off, and glued it to the back to hang up the calendar. I used a permanent marker to write the dates, but puff paint would work too!
As we open up in December I hope this gives you some fun holiday activity ideas to do with your family. And if you do try them, I’d love, to hear all about it. Send me an email, tag me on social media or even leave me a comment below!
xoxo, Shantel
[…] THIS BLOG POST for part one of our family Christmas Advent Calendar […]