I hadn’t planned to write a post about advent calendars this year as I randomly splurge at my local Costco when I found some pre-made LEGO-themed ones. That said I’ve since come across a post in one of my Facebook groups where a list of activities was asked for to fill an advent calendar and I’ve since been wondering if I should share what I’ve used to fill up my own in the past in case you’re looking for inspiration of your own. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not I hope the activities and ideas in this post helps you out.

Normally before December comes around I try to create a list of potential ideas, activities, and items I want to include in our advent calendar that year. I don’t set it up ahead of time though. Instead I keep the physical items in a bag hidden away and fill in each day the night before so I don’t have to worry about the kids looking ahead. A benefit to this is if I’m giving an item larger than the drawer itself, which is often, I can easily hide the item the night before along with a small paper clue placed in the next day’s drawer. I end up hiding the items in only a couple of spots (normally under the couch or under the Christmas tree skirt) so I think the kids have learned to not peek before they have breakfast so if the surprise is hidden it’s not given away. As the month goes on I like to keep track of what we did over December by jotting them down in my advent calendar printable, that I shared back in 2017, so after Christmas I can easily look back and remember what we did. This also means that if plans change I can easily adjust my advent calendar plans without having to remove anything last second from the calendar. Plus after they’ve opened the day’s drawer there’s nothing stopping them from playing with the advent calendar by using the drawers and putting the puzzle back together.

If you're interested in writing out your own advent calendar you can download the file here:

Here are many of the toys and activities we did over the years to fill both our December and our advent calendar’s drawers.

Christmas Books

My absolute favorite idea for advent calendars are books. Every year when Christmas is over I hide our Christmas books inside a gift bag and place it in the boxes with our Christmas stuff. Then the next year I can quickly hide the books away once they’re unpacked without the kids remembering what exactly they were. This way I’m able to dole the books out with our advent calendar. The kids absolutely love it when their surprise for the day are several new Christmas books. Over the years I’ve been buying cute Christmas books so whenever I eventually have 24 really good books we love I’m planning on wrapping them and putting them in a basket. Then each night leading up to Christmas the kids can take turns unwrapping a book to read that night.

In case you’re looking for book ideas the one book I’m looking forward to reading the most each and every year is one I stumbled across at our library’s quarterly book sale and only bought because my kids were little and there was a touch and feel component to it. The book is called One Snowy Night by M. Christina Butler and it’s an adorable story about a little hat a hedgehog gets from Father Christmas. The hat then gets gifted to each animal in the story as it’s stretched and contorted until it finally makes it’s way back to the little hedgehog as the perfect blanket to keep warm him after his friends save him from the wintery wind outside.

If you’re looking for other ways to present your Christmas books I quickly looked around online and found Jennifer Garry’s How to Create Your Own Book Advent Calendar on Brightly where she wrapped the books in four different types of wrapping paper and added a spinner, matching the paper, to determine which book needed to be opened each night. I also found a list of 24 of the Best Children’s Holiday Books for Advent Countdown on Kelle Hampton where she included treats and instructions like hot cocoa and a fort, popcorn under the stars, or a s’mores kit under their twinkle lights with some of the books.

Holiday Themed Outings

Do you have any Christmas traditions that you do every year? Why not surprise the kids by having them find out they’re going with a note in their advent calendar. I don’t know if our area is going to do it again this year but in the past we’ve attempted to go see the Christmas train when it stops in our city. The morning of the train I have the kids open their advent calendar’s drawer to find a drawing of a train, so they knew we were going later on, along with a mini candy cane or something.

Are there any places you normally go every year? With the COVID restrictions many things are being cancelled but that also means that some events are going virtual so there might be a virtual version of what your normally do. It’s not the same but in the case of the Christmas train I just found by searching online that the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train is creating a live concert on their Facebook page on December 12th at 6 p.m. MT. Other events, like Christmas light walk-throughs, might still be going on in a more socially distanced or stay in your vehicle way so you may still be able to attend based on your area and comfort levels.

Are you looking to go shopping for any specific Christmas decorations this year? The last couple years I included a Christmas ornament shopping day in our advent calendar. This way I was able to take the kids to the store to pick out their favorite ornament in person and then I got a Christmas ornament snapshot of who they were based on these yearly ornaments purchases. This year we’re going to skip this tradition but I did want to include it in case you’re comfortable having your kids go shopping with you. For a more COVID safe way you could always have your kids pick ornaments online (I’m surprising my kids with an adorable COVID-related one through Etsy) or create your own ornaments at home.

Any General Type of Outing

Two years I finally checked off an item on the wish list by taking the family out to check out the Arizona Cactus Garden. It wasn’t Christmas-themed at all but it was a fun break from our normal routine that, although planned a couple days before, the kids didn’t know about until they opened their advent calendar that morning. We had a blast checking out all the different cactus and even had a quick cold picnic beside the garden. That same year a popup at one of our nearby malls hosted Rachel Doorley from TinkerLab so we also got to add an outing to build DrawBots to our advent calendar. As a quick aside I just looked up DrawBots and found a blog post by Not Just Cute with Amanda Morgan showing videos of her version of the DrawBots from the TinkerLab book. Since we normally never really go to malls we had a blast afterwards simply wandering around exploring and split a cup of ice cream three ways. It reminded me of checking out the large lit up Christmas tree at the local mall with my sister and a Christmas coffee pre-kids. If COVID wasn’t around I could definitely see adding a wander around the mall with my kids to my list again this year… maybe next year it will be.

Purchase Seasonal Food or Treats

Years before the kids were born I created an entire tea advent calendar for Matt and I to enjoy. I really wanted to use my new just painted advent calendar and had just realized how much tea we owned so I went through and created 24 little plastic wrapped bundles of tea, thoughtfully placed them in each drawer, and carefully recorded which teas went in which drawers. The plan was to drink each day’s tea together, record what we liked, and later look at the key I made so we knew which were our favorites and which we didn’t like as much. Being busy university students we ended up not keeping up with the calendar and were still going through them in January.

Since then I haven’t made another food-specific calendar although I have bought a David’s Tea advent calendar one year for me and a Costco beer calendar for Matt last year. Both took longer than expected to finish but we still loved them. For the kids’ I’ve started adding holiday treats to some of their advent calendar days. This could include a simple candy cane, some special chocolate, or a special melting hot cocoa snowman  from Trader Joe’s.

Food-Related Activities

Do you do holiday baking? Whether it’s cookies or something else for you or some friends why not include it in your advent calendar especially if it’s something your kids help you with and would be excited to do. If you don’t like making baked treats from scratch there’s tons of kits out there that you can buy whether it’s pre-made cookies to decorate or a gingerbread house. Last year I bought pre-made cookies with icing at the grocery store for a playdate and then added some extra sprinkles I had on hand so everyone had more than enough sugar to decorate their cookies with. Two years ago I found a gingerbread volcano that I couldn’t pass up at Michael’s Arts and Crafts which I added some graham cookies, a container of icing, and some more candy decorations to so the kids got a long decorating session making their special treats. Additionally, over the last several years, I’ve been baking a three ingredient shortbread cookie that Matt’s been loving and has become a mid-December tradition. If you’re trying to watch your calories there’s always the junction between food and decorations if you want to make salt dough Christmas tree ornaments or other decorations using other food stuff like cloves or orange peels.

Small Themed Crafts

If you’re looking for small activities for your kids I’ve found so many small seasonal kits at Michael’s Arts and Crafts and Joann’s Fabrics. I actually have a foam jack-o-lantern kit I bought from Michael’s at Halloween that I’ve been hiding and saving so the kids, especially Zoey, can make some pumpkin Christmas tree ornaments for our tree this year.

This year I decided not go shopping with the kids so they’re unable to pick their own ornaments in person. I instead purchased some small hollow plastic ornaments so they can design their own Christmas tree ornaments to mark this year. Years ago I bought large plastic Dollar Tree ornaments and had the kids fill it with glittery pipe-cleaners and assorted pompoms so I’m curious what we’ll end up doing with these ornaments this year now that they’re so much older.

I don’t know if you’re ordering parcels right now and what they’re packed with but if you received anything with packing peanuts you should definitely check to see if they’re biodegradable by seeing if they can dissolve in water. If so you can make snowy sculptures by getting the packing peanuts slightly damp and sticking them together. We haven’t done this at home but our local discovery museum normally sets this up once a year for the kids to create and the last time we kept it going at home by painting them with tempura paint. If you want more information I found a post about it on Kid Activities Blog.

Holiday Cards

Are you looking to create holiday cards for your friends and/or family? This year we’re taking it easy by ordering photo cards online but when the kids were much younger I tried to find ways to incorporate them into designing the cards with me. One year I used paint and my children’s feet and fingers to make winter scenes on the cards. Another year I used masking tape to create negative spaces on cards so they could scribble away and once done I peeled up the tape to make a sense from the chaotic scribbles. Finally I also once carved some simple shapes onto some potatoes so the kids could stamp their own cards themselves.

Holiday-Themed Art

Whether you have the paint out already for a previous craft or are simply looking for some way to record how small your kids’ hands and feet are there’s always art. I made mine while doing a series of seasonal signs for our front door so I used canvas, acrylic paint, an oil-based pen, and eventually mod podge so it would last awhile but this could be so much simpler to accomplish with just stamps and pens on paper.

Holiday Sensory Play

Do your kids love sensory activities? My kids love sensory activities although we’ve been doing less of them since Ada started school. The kids love getting a new custom batch of playdough, mixing some oobleck up, or squishing some slime. It’s not necessarily holiday themed but back in March I created a summary post of all the sensory activities I’ve posted about in the past that would work inside or in your backyard. Feel free to check it out if you’re looking for more fun activities to do with your kids. And if you want to make it more Christmas-y you could always add food dye (for red and green) or some Christmas related toys to the activity. Just a couple weeks ago I came across a Fisher-Price Little People® nativity set at my local Target and if my kids were younger I would’ve definitely purchased it as I was looking for something like that for the last several years.

Don’t want to make a mess? Why not keep it simple with water and some water-safe toys… maybe make it funner by adding a couple drops of food dye, bathtub colors, and/or some soap for bubbles. Do you have a Christmas mould you never use and copious amounts of broken crayons… why not melt them down and make some cool shaped crayons.

Clothing

If you have Christmas clothing set aside for the kids from either previous years or something new it’s awesome to throw it in the advent calendar so they have time to wear it before Christmas is over and done. Now is the time to get it out.

Random Gifts

The advent calendar is also the perfect excuse to hand out those small items you would’ve given the kids anyway any other month. Also this way they can use them before they open their Christmas stocking. Do you have anything hanging around your home that you meant to give them and kept forgetting about or are waiting until the perfect time?

Small Cheap Seasonal Items

Are there any small items you want to buy from the local dollar store or somewhere else? Advent calendars and stocking stuffers are the perfect justification to buy these although with advent calendars you can better justify Christmas decorations. This could be something small like splitting up a package of magic grow capsules to watch the sponges expand and then play with in the bathtub until they come apart. My absolute favorite seasonal item are the window clings from the local Dollar Tree that stick really well and for a dollar I end up with a window puzzle if I keep the outer layer of the cling along with the individual stickers. I haven’t visited my local Dollar Tree yet this year but I normally keep the items I bought in one place, dole them out with the advent calendar, and any leftover ones on Christmas Eve get put in the Christmas stockings. Back in 2017 my advent calendar ended up mostly being small items from local Target and Dollar Store.

Large Toy to Cover Multiple Days

If you have a larger item that can be split up and you want them to play with it sooner rather than later you can easily add it to your advent calendar over multiple days. Two years ago I bought Ada a LEGO® set and Zoey a playdough kit from Costco and ended up splitting the kits into ten days worth of advent calendar surprises for both kids. I started out pacing how often they got the next installment and then realized that I was running out of time to give it to them. I considered saving some for Christmas and then instead just gave them out on back to back days so they got it all in time. The kids loved the toys and I felt better buying one larger item rather than so many little items like I did the year before.

Last Minute Printables

Do you have a printer or have access to a printer? There are tons of simple activity pages or booklets online you can find and print out to surprise your kids with. If you think they’ll use a printed page multiple times you can save time printing multiple copies by putting it in a protective binder sheet or laminate it beforehand. At the beginning of the school year I created a double-sided printable PDF from images I found online for free and shared how I did it. If you’re looking for more printable activities I’ve found some free activities (although they also have paid ones I haven’t tried) through Teachers Pay Teachers, Twinkl, and 1+1+1=1. I absolutely adore the custom worksheets you can generate through Create Printables if your child is working on their writing. I also love the printables on the LEGO® website although I’ve previously found them separated by how they’re categorized so if you’re looking for something specific it might be best to go through a search engine instead of the website itself. I’ve gone into this before when I created LEGO® themed clothing for my kids. I’ve also just looked for more and found these printable coloring pages and activities through LEGO.com here and here that I’m definitely going to check out for my kids later on.

A printable is also fun if you have an activity planned for later in the day and you want something for the kids to do while they wait. For example say you’re going on a zoo walk that afternoon so you find a coloring page online for your kids favorite animal so they can get excited for the zoo while they color it. Planning on going for a drive to see the Christmas lights? Give them a printed paper filled with blank Christmas lights (A to Z Teacher Stuff), color them, cut them out, create a scene on a blank piece of paper, and glue the lights down… if gluing maybe skip the crayons. Or are you planning on decorating your Christmas tree later on? Find a blank tree printable (Print.Color.Fun!) and have them decorate it however they want while getting excited for later.

Virtual Events

With COVID the lead-up to our Christmas is going to look different this year. That said there are also positives. There are so many events that are going online instead. You could lookup your favorite events and see if they’ve gone virtual in some way and whether you can somehow still go to it. I’m currently super excited for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra livestream event on December 18th that we’ve just bought tickets for ($30 U.S.) to stream from our living room. I already mentioned it to the kids so it won’t come as a complete surprise but as it airs around suppertime I’m debating surprising the kids with a picnic in the living room while we watch it. As November ends I’m curious what other events I’ll hear about.

Other years we filled our Christmas advent calendar with fun seasonal outings, playdates or family outings at children’s museums or zoos, and, last year, Matt had a fun holiday party through work and we experienced the magic of LEGOLAND® at Christmas. Although this year will feel different from previous years I’m still excited what we’ll end up filling our December calendar with this year. I’ll probably choose several of the ideas listed above including, maybe, going to the Dollar Tree as writing these ideas made me really want window clings again this year.

I hope this post helps you come up with something fun to do with your kids whether you’re planning your advent calendar in advance or you’re midway through the month and you’re trying to think of something fun to do. Feel free to share how you made the holidays special or what fun activity you came up with in the comments below. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas if you celebrate and if not that you’re having a great December.

If you want to create your own advent calendar you can download my printable from my 2017 post here:

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