Creative advent calendar ideas

[Feellikeimthemaid]

Anyone got some creative ideas for home made "advent calendars" for older teens? My BIL and SIL buy their DD teens several pairs of new socks and hang them up (with pin on numbers) from a string across the lounge wall. Each sock has a small gift in, plus they get a new pair of socks every other day.

What other ideas do Mumsnetters have?

We have themed little gifts, along with an individual chocolate every day. This year we have a tea collection (different flavours of tea, some naice biscuits and a bone China mug), a coffee one (different roasts plus some monin syrups) and a Pandora bracelet one (with a new bracelet and a charm every day).

Lots of jigsaws have 24 or 48 pieces, so you can give them one or two pieces per day. I did this a couple of years ago and built the puzzles myself one evening so that when I put the individual pieces in the pockets of the calendar, they were in an order where each new piece would be able to join on to the previous pieces. I want to do similar to an Airfix kit this year.

One year I printed each child a colouring page and a crossword for each day.

When my eldest could read, I printed a Christmassy story off the internet. I divided it into 25 paragraphs and have him one each day.

Buy a pack of paper chains and divide them up. The paper chain gets longer and longer each day.

Activities go down well. The works have lots of craft items that dont take too long to do so keeps them interested, also baking kits like the fairy cakes etc, movie weekend with christmas movies and popcorn,

You could write the activities down and pop in a jar so its like a lucky dip? Or do the advent with the activity written down