Things to put inside Christmas calendar

[Ansumpasty]

We started the tradition a few years ago of a big felt tree Xmas calendar. At the time, I only had 1 child, who was young, and spending £1-2 for a litte toy car etc each little pocket was ok.

I now have 2 children and vowed to change things after last year. It was next to impossible to find things a 6 year old likes for around £1 and both children were acting ungrateful and sulking if they only got, for example, a few chocolate coins that day when the other got a little plastic piece of crap, which they had lost by the end of the day.

I liked the idea of books, with a hiding place clue, but can’t afford that many books. I also like the idea of little ‘activity’ notes, such as ‘today will read a Christmas story’ or ‘write our Christmas lists.’ Not many ideas though and I feel they will be less than enthused with this.

Any ideas for me?

Try book people and the works for books packs. Def no more expensive than £1 a day and could do one between them.

I’ve done this for a few years now and do a ‘giving and receiving’ advent.

I put activities as you suggested, such as write letters to Santa, go and choose a tree decoration, go for a drive at night to see the lights, plus any activities that I had planned anyway went in the calendar, so the visit to Santa, cinema trip etc

I then also put things in about giving to others, so choose an item each for the food bank, make a bird feeder, take old towels or dog treats to the dogs trust, send a Christmas card to family, so then we could chat about the true meaning of Christmas - I know it’s a bit sickly, but my children really got something out of it.

I do this. I go on eBay or facebook marketplace and buy a bundle of whatever collectible they are into. This year was a bundle of shopkins for that cost £12 (about 50 figures, and a couple if dolls that will be wrapped seperately as a gift) only dd2 will be having the reusable this year as dd1 is having the funko Harry potter one as one of her birthday presents.

Previous years I've done Lego minifigures, Moshi monsters, novelty rubbers/stationary, vintage kinder egg toys (turtles/lions/egyptian cats).

Or if you wanted to do the book advent look in local charity shops loads sell them for less that £1 each and are in great condition. I often get books for 20-50p each that I save for birthday/Christmas presents.

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.

You could also buy a pack of paper chains and divide them up. The paper chain gets longer and longer each day.

Brilliant ideas, thank you all!

I put Christmas jokes some days in our one. Seems to go down well.

I've shared this on here before, but I used to put a tree decoration in each pocket. There was a 3ft tree on the windowsill that the decorations went on every morning, and, on Christmas eve night, it became our table centrepiece for Christmas dinner.
On day 1, one child got a set of battery operated lights, and the other the star/fairy/whatever was going on top.
By Christmas day, the tree was almost collapsing under the weight of ornaments, but the dc loved it.
The only reason we don't do it anymore, is we've got 5 dc now, and a 3ft tree will not hold 120 decorations!