Advent activity list

[Hibernatalie]

Hi all, I'm making my DC (7 and 5) an activity advent calendar this year. Bought a beautiful fabric pocket calendar - very excited. Here is my list of ideas, can anyone think of any more? Some are things I already have booked, I need a couple of low maintenance ones because 10 days of December will be days DH have been at work and the kids have been at school all day so we will only have a couple of hours of evening together and will be tired. Also would like some more altruistic ones. So far:

⁃	Watch a Christmas film or episode 
⁃	Hot chocolate with marshmallows 
⁃	Polar express 
⁃	Decorate the tree 
⁃	Listen to Christmas music 
⁃	Drive or walk to look at Christmas lights 
⁃	Go to church service 
⁃	Read a Christmas book 
⁃	Clue to find new teddy/ PJs/ bath bomb + leave snack out for Santa 
⁃	Christmas jigsaw puzzle 
⁃	Ice skating
⁃	Buy a new decoration for the tree 
⁃	Sing a christmas carol
⁃	Listen to Christmas music 
⁃	Do some Christmas colouring
⁃	Bake some Christmas cookies 
⁃	Eat a gingerbread man 
⁃	Give out Christmas cards 
⁃	Donate to a food bank 

Thanks all!

I think this is a lovely idea. I don’t know where you live, but we always like to go for Christmassy walks in the woods and bring home a bit of ivy, a “Yule log”, make a small fire and toast marshmallows etc. We have a lovely book about all the animals waking from their winter hibernation to get food treats from Santa, and we like to think about how the animals might be coping with the cold (look for pine cones chewed by squirrels, nuts with holes chewed in them etc).

We do an activity calendar - the first year I was wracking my brains to come up with loads of different activities, after that I realised you can just do the same thing over and over and kids are happy! So from your list if you need some more low energy activities I’d just make loads of the days “read a Christmas book”. You can get loads of Christmas themed books and produce new books each time if you want. But for us on most of the nights we snuggle up under a blanket and read one of our Christmas stories.

We also have a couple of Christmas themed board games we play some nights.

What are the Christmas themed board games please?

Write letter to Father Christmas?
Buy/Make a gift for each other (the two of them)?
As someone else says, I would duplicate the film/books activities, especially for school nights. So instead of "watch of film" name a specific film or two, three and that becomes multiple. Likewise with a book or two, three.
And likewise with Christmas lights - are there a couple of different places you could go to do this more than once?

Wrap a present?
Christmas pass the parcel with Christmas paper.
Make gift tags
Make mulled apple juice

Definitely do movie nights more than once- lots of xmas films to watch! Same for books...

Local garden centre to look at lights/go to cafe
Take a donation of stuff needed for a local animal rescue charity
Pantomime or show?
Carol concert
Go to charity shop with budget to buy small gifts for others
Choose and wrap teacher presents
Winter market if one nearby
Make bird food and put out for birds or take to park for birds

These are all excellent, thank you!

Christmas picture bingo (print outs online)
Make paper snowflakes and stick them in the windows
Write a letter to Santa
Ice the Christmas cake
Turn on the outside Christmas lights
Go to local town lights switch on
Choose some toys to donate to charity
Go Christmas shopping
Make a Christmas card for Nanny and Grandad
Write Christmas cards for your school friends
Visit Santa
Pantomime
national Trust type lights thing
Make a wreath for the front door
Deliver Christmas cards to the neighbours
Carol service at church
Christingle service at church
Crib service at church
Christmas movie night/sleepover in the lounge with the tree
Late night stargazing walk somewhere properly dark (country park for us) - wrap up warm and take hot chocolate flask!
Christmas themed colouring/word search//crosswords printed out
Wrap presents and put them under the tree

That's all I have for now!

We do this every year, but mostly on the hoof depending on what I think we'll have time and energy for each day. It's always a film the day after Christmas drinks though.
I include school Christmas fair, local other fair, pantomime, present shopping for others, present wrapping, cards, so it's the joy of the preparations for the season as well as the jollies you do. Lots of Christmas crafting ones. Decorating plain baubles, making decorations, do a gingerbread house. Games too. I'm also repeat them as there is so much baking and crafting to do and films to watch, songs to sing - downtime required.

Choose a new decoration each to hang on the tree (we go to our local garden centre for this).
Make gingerbread house (we buy a kit from M&S).
Make magic reindeer food to sprinkle on your garden on Xmas Eve for the reindeer (oats and edible glitter, so that it's wildlife friendly).
Make gingerbread men or cupcakes decorated with edible Christmas decorations (all supermarkets sell them now).

So many good ideas - thank you!
I have finished Christmas shopping and done letters to Santa by end of November normally, and light switch on in our local town is November too. We've got Santa visits, polar express, ice-skating and light trail booked in so don't want any more big events, so these low key ones are perfect!

Learn a joke for dad/granny

Bake some cookies and bring to local fire station/library/police station

Print some free seasonal printables from the web - colouring pictures, word searches, word mining, story starters, maths sheets etc and roll into a tube in the calendar picket

Make a Santa, snowman, penguin from a toilet roll inner

Make a card to say thanks to local services or handmade cards for grannies etc

Potato stamp brown paper for Christmas wrapping, or cardboard for gift tags

Check out local houses which are lit up and decide a route to drive around after dark - give everyone a travel mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows to drink as you go around (and sing Christmas carols)

Go for a winter walk in the local park/forest and see how different it is, look for animal tracks, pick up pine cones for crafts another day

Make fat and seed balls to hang in the garden for the birds

Find out what local choirs are singing in public or free events are on locally to go to (many are collecting for charities in buckets)

Go to local toy shop and get each DC to pick out a toy (to a fixed max budget) that they think would be good for someone their age who isn't as lucky as them - which gives you ideas of what they like as they go around and they give the toy to a local toy/present collection

Have a carpet picnic watching a Christmassy movie - can be just treats on a rainy afternoon or a more picky tea not at the table

I used to buy nets of small choc figures from M&S or Aldi so there was a small one every day, and then most days there was a printable or a note about what we'd do later or the roll of brown paper as a clue for stamping etc.

I'd do a treasure hunt for a pocket money type prize some mornings - with clues sending her running around the house for 5 minutes on the morning. And either a bigger choc treat or small toy or pack of football cards type prize at the end.

And yes to repeating things - I usually used a good few printables every advent, and sometimes she wasn't in the mood that day but usually she loved them if they were seasonal rather than schoolwork - so a maths page with pictures of Santa and holly was fun but a plain page of maths problems was boring.🤣. And word mining was a great one to use in the evening in bed to get her brain focussed on 1 thing so easier to sleep.

Just skimmed this thread so sorry if it's already been said: make sure you make a note of which activity you've put in which pocket, in case you need to swap activities in a hurry (eg one of you feeling under the weather, would be better to have hot chocolate or read a book than have a walk to look at the lights).

We have a couple of garden centres near here that have lovely displays that our DC used to love, not sure if that's been mentioned already

The Works have some really nice Christmas craft stuff for sale ie make your own baubles and paint a Christmas tree. Be ideal for an afternoon in front of the fire on a cold/wet afternoon when you don’t really want to go out.

Trying not to duplicate and of the above ideas...

Putting up the tree, anyone said that yet?

Decorating kids bedrooms... We go all out with the foil garlands hanging from the ceiling that you had in the 80s (only allowed in kids rooms, the rest of the house is tasteful 🤣)

Collect holly to put behind mirrors and pictures on the walks

Disposable bbq and toast marshmallows

Donate to charity of kids choice

Donate to food bank

Donate to toys on the table

Leave secret santa presents in local park

Make oven dried orange slices and decorate the tree with them

DIY snow globe (water, glycerin, and glitter on a jam jar with an old toy stuck on the lid)

Christmas disco bath (christmas music, glow sticks in the bath, disco lights /fairy lights in the doorway)

Make elf doughnuts (dip cheerios in icing and add sprinkles)

I also say that any family visits in December or christmas school activities (eg class party, disco, open craft morning) are an advent activity. It's like giving myself the day off

Indoor snowball fight (using white wool pompoms if you can remember how to make them)

Advent breakfast (christmas tree shaped crumpets with Nutella and sprinkles and marshmallows sprinkled with more sugar and just a hint of childhood obesity)

Make sausage rolls/mince pies/rum truffles/marzipan sweets

Buy chalk pens and draw snowflakes on the window

Make cards for their teachers

So many great ideas already mentioned... to add,

Make a Christmas wreath with things from garden
Mini Christmas tree for each child to decorate and have in room
Christmas paper chains
Play Christmas Monopoly
Buy a present for sibling/relative (can be from local shop)
Reindeer cupcakes (glace cherry nose, pretzel antlers)
Stained glass window cookies for the tree
Make marshmallow snow people (we use writing icing and strawberry laces)
Make place settings for Christmas lunch
Christmas wreath cake (we make one from a children's cook book)
Christmas bath with themed ducks/bath bombs and fake tea lights

Make pomanders (you need: naval oranges, cloves and ribbon)

Make salt dough Christmas decs (add cinnamon / all spice for festive bonus points). Once baked, they can be painted.

Writing a letter to Father Christmas
Make Christmas collages (could be a contest)
Handmade ornaments contest
Make Christmas slideshows with music
Taking christmas themed photos or adding christmas backrounds to the ones you have
Christmas movie marathon is a must in our house!

-Christmas jokes
-christmas trivia quiz
-christmas charades
-write thank you letter to teacher/someone who helped you this year
-Make Santa hat strawberries (dipped in white chocolate)
-Make snowman pancakes (smaller one for head, larger for body, dust with sugar)
-do an act of kindness (hold open door, help carry shopping etc)
-clean and tidy their bedroom/toy cupboard/bookshelf ready for new toys to arrive
-clear out and donate old clothes
-donate a book or toy for children in hospital at Christmas
-learn to draw a reindeer /Santa / whatever using a step by step video on YouTube

So lovely! This thread is making me pine for those days, DC are now 15 and 16!

Another one we did was to stick cloves into oranges. A bit old-fashioned I guess!

Oh and make a list of things you are thankful for, sort out old toys and take to charity shop, take food to local food bank.