Local mum Jo Whittaker has come up with this fantastic idea for an activity advent calendar – each day of advent she has an idea for a festive activity to do with her family. She’s inspired me to do something similar and I’m going to fit some ideas in to suit our family and our budget. Her children are 9, 5 and 4 so I’m going to adapted it to suit mine, who are 7 and almost 11.
They’re all just suggestions of what you could do each day, I hope it inspires you like it’s inspired me!
- Make Christmas cards
- Make crackers for Christmas dinner
- Make presents for family
- Make a funny family calendar
- Christmas baking day
- Make a gingerbread house (there are a range of sets from £2.99 at B&M to more expensive ones at M&S!)
- Christmas film day
- North Pole Breakfast
- Visit Santa
- Post off our Christmas lists
- Drive round some local Christmas lights
- Christmas walk around- our local area to look at houses lights, taking a hot chocolate with us
- Random acts of Christmas kindness day
- Sort out our old toys to drop some off at a charity
- Buy a new decoration for the tree
- Look round a Garden Centre’s Christmas displays
- Christmas puzzles and games day – there are lots of free doenloads online and we sometimes pick up new ones at charity shops
- Learn about Christmas past, usually with a craft or food
- Learn about Christmas in other countries, usually with a craft or food
- Watch a Christmas show or pantomime
- Visit a Christmas fair or market
- Christmas crafts day
- Christmas music – either seeing some carols or a concert or just murdering silent night on recorders and a triangle.
- Get ready for Santa!
Other things we’ve done and I sometimes swap in are:
- Making a santa’s workshop for my littlies to practice designing toys, constructing out of junk modelling or lego, or practice their wrapping skills
- Christmas story days
- Lego challenges e.g. make a sleigh out of lego that can hold santa and with room for presents
- Christmas tree displays (both Hull and Beverley Minsters have one this year)
- A shop for the food banks with the kids choosing what they think would be good to receive at Christmas and being set a budget to work to
- Making pictures for residential homes
- Live Nativities and seeing reindeer
- Making reindeer food out of birdseed and edible glitter
Hope everyone has a super December!
