Advent calendars with little boxes... Tiny gifts ideas

[growingweeble]

My Mum is going to give my dd one of those reusable wooden advent calendars with little boxes for each day. The box is small, about 1 inch sq. Does anyone have genius ideas of what to put inside them? Otherwise it will be chocolate buttons everyday! My dd1 is 2.5yrs.

I've got an advent calendar with pockets and put bobbles, hair slides, sweets, stickers and tiny toys in it. Last year I found a miniature tea set and put a little cup or plate in on some days, so she had collected the whole tea set by the Christmas. This year I have some little toy cars and other bits and bobs.

I sometimes put a little note in ours - eg 'today we are making paper chains' 'today we are going to put up our tree'. Also tiny/flat tree decorations.

I have one of these and I am going to have some days as doing things for others - random acts of kindness - instructions on slips of paper in the draws. Think they should be thinking About giving to others too not just a long fest of me me me!

Ooo - also give clues to find things elsewhere that might be too big to put in the draws - not totally heart less!!

I am liking the little slips of paper ideas.

Mine are teens now, shall I give them a daily job

I write an activity on a bit of paper for every day in advent. I change them depending on what else is on - they can be as simple as "go for a walk to look at the lights in our neighbours' houses", "have a hot chocolate", "watch the Snowman", stuff like that, to slightly more ambitious "make stuff".
There was a really good thread on this last year which I entirely ripped off to great effect - have a search, it was brilliant.
Or for little gifts I would go Lego / playmobil figs and bricks, hair slides and bobbles, pencil sharpener, rubber etc. Also if you get a playmobil advent calendar, you can use the wooden one to recycle it next year.

I am putting in:
Little plastic animals
Finger puppets
A balloon
Little pot of bubbles
Stickers
Badges

I have a couple of presents that won't fit in (xmas books) which I'm going to tie a piece of wool to and to the advent calendar so dd can find.

We always put post-its in with clues where to find things hidden around the house. I have 2 dcs and would say that it is very, very hard to think up 48 sets of rhyming clues, so if you start down this route, be prepared to sit for an hour at night trying to think of pointless rhymes. .

a piece of lego for each day so you can build the lego toy gradually.
MIL is apparently sending us a Knitivity and I'm wondering if that will fit, and have a good number of pieces to build up gradually.

This is such a lovely idea!
I love Christmas.

Its the sort of thing that makes me long for my DS to be a little older. He's just 2 and I'm not sure he'd understand it yet?
Or would he?