Last year I made an Advent Calendar with tins velcroed onto a painting canvas that I decorated. I filled the tins with activities for us to do each day leading up to Christmas. Since Jenna was only 2 (almost 3) and Grant was 1 1/2 years old, we were a bit limited with what we could do. So I was excited to pull out the Advent Calendar this year and brainstorm some new ideas to add to our repertoire. We.had.a.blast! The kids always looked forward to opening the tins in the morning to find out what we'd be doing that day...and sometimes Mommy snuck in a few pieces of candy for them to share as well (a nice, added bonus). I also enjoyed planning these fun activities to do with them, and was sad to see it come to an end.
I tried to snap pictures of our activities, but didn't capture them all. Here's a sampling of what we did do though:
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| Root Bear Floats - I know it has nothing to do with Christmas, but we thought it would be fun. They LOVED them! :) |
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| A candlelit bath |
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| Snowflake glitter craft - Jenna loved this one! Jenna picked out different colored popsicle sticks, I hot glued them together, and then she used some glitter glue squeeze bottles to decorate them. I have to admit, I not only struggle with messes, but also with expecting the "right" end result, but I've been working on letting the kids explore and do some things on their own. So with this craft, I had to take a step back and just let her decorate to her heart's content, even if she was a bit wasteful with the glitter glue (ack!). I'm so glad I did though - she had a blast! |
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| Indoor picnic by the Christmas tree. Not only do the kids enjoy this, but it also ends up being a treat for Bailey as well. ;) |
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| We decorated upside-down sugar cones to look like Christmas trees. I know it's not a great picture, but Jenna did a great job icing and decorating her tree. |
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| Grant enjoyed this activity too, probably because most of the "decorations" ended up in his belly. ;) |
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| Another night we made candy canes from red and white beads and pipe cleaners. It was great fine motor practice for Grant to string the beads onto the pipe cleaner. He did a good job with it, but his interest waned after a few minutes, so Jenna ended up finishing his. |
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| This was also great patterning practice for Jenna - red, white, red, white. However, I realized after a while it was okay if she wanted to veer from the pattern - it was her candy cane to make it how she wanted it. (Another example of me trying to "let go" and let them be creative on their own without having a perfect end result. Why is that so hard?!) |
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| Another favorite that we continued from last year - Santa pancake. A strawberry hat and nose, banana ears and eyes (with a chocolate chip morsel in the middle), and whipped cream for the hair and hat. Yum!! |
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| A Christmas tree craft - I cut green strips of paper and Jenna had to sort them by size to make a tree. Then she dabbed the eraser end of a pencil into white paint to make the snowflakes. |
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| Family Game Night! |
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| We made reindeer hats and used their hand prints as the antlers. |
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| A snowman pizza....one of Mommy's favorites! :) |
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| Something new we tried this year - "gingerbread houses." I originally was going to make them out of Rice Krispie treats, but as I researched that some more, I realized it was WAY more involved than I anticipated. So I dug through my bin of recyclable items that I've saved over the past few years and pulled out 2 cream cartons. Then just iced them and stuck the graham crackers on top. Since I didn't plan this ahead of time (shame, shame), I stuck them in the freezer for about 20 minutes to help the icing set so the graham crackers wouldn't slide all over. |
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| Drew and I helped ice the houses and the kids got to decorate them with all sorts of different candies. |
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| Grant surprised us by sticking some candy corn up his nose. We made the mistake of laughing and so someone else decided to mimic as well... |
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| I know, I know...bad. But, in our defense, we did then talk about how we DON'T stick things up our noses! ;) |
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| All done! |
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| It took a lot of willpower for the kids not to then rip their houses apart to nibble on the candy. Luckily there was some candy leftover that they were able to munch. |
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| Cottonball Snowman |
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| Our formal candlelight dinner. We all dressed up (which Jenna LOVED) and had a nice meal with the lights low and the candles lit. |
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| Another night we had green floats (just like root bear floats, but with green sherbert ice-cream and sprite) and then watched the old classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. |
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| Of course we had to make some homemade sugar cookies. I cheated a little and bought a pre-packaged bag of cookie dough that just required a few extra ingredients added in. Then we rolled it out and used our Christmas cookie cutters to make fun themed cookies. |
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| I just love this picture of Grant all "floured-up." |
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| The best part was decorating them. I iced them and then let the kids add the sprinkles. Thankfully we did the decorating when Drew was home, so he could help with the chaos. Grant kept accidentally touching the sprinkle lid to the icing and both of them were getting a little "sprinkle happy." But they enjoyed it, which is what it's all about! |
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| Another night the kids found golden tickets under their pillows at bedtime. The golden tickets were for a ride on the "Minivan Express" to go look at Christmas lights. So the kids ran downstairs and put their coats on over top their pajamas. |
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| I punched their tickets before they boarded the Minivan Express (I know, maybe a bit overkill - it's the teacher in me.) |
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| Grant holding on to his Golden Ticket. |
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| The kids in the van, ready to go! I also had a little bit of hot chocolate in their sippy cups for them to sip on during the ride. Jenna really got into looking at the lights, but had had enough after about twenty minutes, so we headed back home. |
Some other activities we did with our advent calendar included:
- Making Christmas cards for their Sunday School teachers
- Having hot chocolate and reading a Christmas story
- Cutting down a Christmas tree
- Singing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus
- Singing and dancing to Christmas music
- Reading the Nativity story from the Bible and reenacting it with their Little People Nativity set
- Visiting Santa at the mall
I also have a huge collection of Christmas children's books, so I wrapped 25 books and each night the kids got to pick one book to open and read before bed. They always looked forward to doing that after baths. That's one tradition I'd like to continue each year.
I loved planning these activities and liked having the mix of crafts and bigger family activities. I had wanted to also incorporate discussing the nativity story each day or at least a few days a week, but just couldn't seem to get myself organized enough to do that as well. Next year I'd definitely like to do that just to make sure we have the right focus leading up to Christmas. We did discuss the true meaning of Christmas many times over the weeks leading up to Christmas and Jenna seemed to understand that; however, Grant's still a little young to quite understand it all.
