This is the beginnings of our Advent Calendar. I've been collecting and combining different ideas until I came up with this. Here is the idea...each day has a card...and on the back of each card there will be some Christmas-y thing to do. Some days will have something super simple, like eat a candy cane or watch The Grinch. Other days will have trips we are going to take, like to get our Christmas tree or to see the trains at Grand Central. And other days will have some sort of charity based thing to do, like buy a pair of socks for our church's socks and mitten collection or donate a few toys not played with anymore.
So, as you can see I'm not quite done. I'm hoping to finish by Thanksgiving, but I realized today that Thanksgiving is the day after tomorrow!
Any suggestions on what to add? What are simple Christmas things that you like to do?
12 comments:
What a great idea! Here's some thoughts...
Sing a carol
Read the Night Before Christmas
Make an ornament
Make Chocolate Play Dough
Wrap a present
Make a present
Make treats for the neighbors
Wrap treats for the neighbors
Take treats to the neighbors (hah! 3 for 1 there!)
Donate canned goods
Donate a toy or stuffed animal
Feed the birds
Find 10 Christmas trees while going to "someplace" (the school, the library, etc.)
I think you can tell, I REALLY like this idea.
I love it Robyn! Will you be able to use it year after year and change the ideas as you want or will they be on there permanently? One of my favorites would be to eat holiday flavored ice cream! Happy Thanksgiving to you.
What a great idea, I love it. How about make Christmas cookies, I'm sure you're already planning that one though! We like to also make playdough christmas cookies, or felt ones. Last year we did this great project on a kids life size gingerbread house, made out of an old (big) cardboard box. I will be posting on it soon. It might be too big to fit in your apartment, but you could make a smaller one with a smaller box. I love Christmas crafts.
Merry Christmas!
Dannyelle at lifeisaparty.ca
I like your fancy roladex-style advent calendar! It turned out beautifully! Warning: we visited Grand Central on Day 1 and everything after that for a few days was anti-climactic in comparison. Feed the pigeons on the commercial street? Lame. Do a Christmas dot-to-dot or maze activity? Pshaw. This year I'll spread out the big adventures a bit more. The boys delighted, however, in the process of taking flowers to a shut-in from church, as well as any family-wide activity such as playing a board game or reading and acting out a book. Oh, and drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows or carol singing at the piano! Big hits! Those easy activities were great for those days when I didn't have it in me to do anything momentous.
I also got a few ideas here: http://find-the-elf.blogspot.com/
Have fun! Gobble, gobble!
My brain is taking a nap so I'm completely blanking on ideas even though I came over to comment because my first thoughts was, "Oh! I have so many ideas."
But, anyway, this is really cool!
I love it. The roladex is an interesting way to present it all.
This is so cool! My 1st thoughts were carol singing and drinking Gingerbread Lattes in Starbucks, with Babycinos for the boys. Some more thoughts included some sort of maze for Andrew and visiting your local area after dark to see everyone else's decorations ~ I think the boys would love that.
The carousel is fab, is it 7Gypsies? I've seen used it in Shimelle's JYC class and it looked amazing by the end of 12th Night!
String cranberries and popcorn for the birds? Don't know if you have a place to put that kind of thing where you are, but we're planning to do that. I've stolen your idea since reading your entry (I really like it, too!) and added make gingerbread house (which will be a first for me), make paper snowflakes, cut the Christmas tree.
I love it! Much better than the mints I was going to put in each drawer of our Advent Calendar!
We do one of those too. I created a tree that is supposed to look like the Advent Tree in the pottery barn catalog -- not the same by a FAR shot, and the kids reach in and grab an activity and a piece of candy for each every day. I just realized I need to get off my butt and get the candy and cards written out. Usually it is something like a movie, but we also make reindeer food, make lollipops, gingerbread cookies, wrap a gift, look at chrismtas lights, donate a toy, color a christmas page, make a snowman - inside or out (could use cotton balls if no snow on the ground), make a present, sing Happy Birthday to Jesus, etc. Good luck. Once I get my cards out this year if I find anything fun I will let you know!
-Steph
Something we also do is we have at least 24 Christmas books and we number them and read them once a night.
-Steph
My SIL, Steph who is a double commenter today, also lets the fam get involved, so my mom and I have been able to plan for advent activities with the kids when we visit, which we love. I've made my supa dupa trail mix, with a holiday twist - it's simple "cooking" with the kids, and they love it. Lots of sampling goes on! Love the roladex! I'm sure the boys are in for some great Christmas fun!
I woke up with Christmas activities on my mind and I knew I could count on you for some awesome, down to earth, Christmas goodness. Thanks Robyn and friends!
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