Christmas Advent Calendar 2012.

This year our little girl (almost 3.5 yo) is old enough to really get excited about the holidays. The past two years I did an advent calendar just with little treats inside for her. I wanted to do something more for her this time. She loves doing "activites" with me. Crafting, baking, experimenting, educational worksheets or games, creating, all that fun stuff. Sadly, with me trying to take care of the house and working and having a newborn in the house, she gets ignored too often. So in an attempt to be more intentional about spending one on one time with her, I am doing an activity advent calendar this year. Some of the days I planned something bigger (like ice skating or going to see the lights) but I have plenty of quick crafty things that I can pull out each day to satisfy her desire to do an "activity." A few of the things are scheduled on our calendar but most of these things I actually decide the night before what I feel like doing the next day and I put the little paper in the advent calendar for her to find the next morning.

So in no particular order, here are some of the activities I included in our advent this year:

Pick out christmas tree and decorate the house
Walk around and see the lights downtown
Bake and decorate sugar cookies
Candy cane hunt
Go to library and pick out Chrismas books and movies
Make Cinnamon ornaments with xmas cookie cutters
Watch Muppet Christmas Carol with daddy (family tradition he had as a kid)
Buy and drop off a present for Toys 4 Tots
Thumbprint Christmas lights craft
Make xmas pancakes for dinner (make green and red batter and do this)
Go snow ice skating
Gumdrop creations
Make peanut butter pinecone bird feeders
Play board game in our pj's by the Christmas tree
Build a snowman
Write some Christmas letters to family
Make peppermint playdoh
Cut paper snowflakes
Do mistle toes craft with both girls
Make mini gingerbread houses (except use hotglue to hold it together) or these Christmas trees
Simple paper strip xmas tree and santa crafts, here
Snowball target, building with colored ice, and hiding colored ice in the snow,  here
"Paint" the snow with spray bottles filled with colored water
Make and deliver presents to neighbors

Also, in addition to these activities, we read these verses each morning. So far she is loving it and I am too. It is fun to have something each day that is planned for us to do together this month. It helps me to slow down and really focus on her (and I try really hard not to think about all the other things I should be doing or cleaning and make her my top priority during this time).


After I did my advent, I found this post that I absolutely love! My husband has the car most of the time so almost all of our activities are things that can be done at home. But I think next year we will try to use a bunch of her ideas.

XOXO Hannah