A Different Advent Calendar

Three years ago I wanted to prepare my children, the eldest then 3 and a half, spiritually for Christmas and to offset the secular messages that bombarded them from well, September onwards.

Eventually I decided to take a different approach to the Advent calendars that offered a chocolate or a lolly for each day of December. Instead I tried to come up with an activity for every day that prepared my children spiritually for Christmas.

Where to start?

Well, first of all was the calendar itself. Thankfully my mother obtained a panel from Spotlight which was an Advent Calendar pattern with a Nativity scene as the picture. I quickly set to work sewing up and quilting the panel in readiness for the rest of our activities.

I spent a lot of time trawling the internet for activities for each day but I also used things we had around the house and activities we do every year anyway. For instance we have at least six story books about Christmas, and five are different approaches to the real meaning of Christmas. I purchased a Christmas colouring book that tells the story of Christmas so as we read a book we colour in a picture from this colouring book (which I copy so each child has one and I can reuse the book next Advent) in chronological order: Annunciation, Visitation, travelling to Bethlehem, Jesus’ birth and so on. One of our last activities is to make a cover for these and staple them together so that each child has made their own Christmas story.

Also included in our Advent calendar activities are things like: putting up our Christmas tree, setting up our nativity scene, decorating our house, attending ‘Come to Bethlehem’ which is a live nativity display in our local parish, and any Christmas parties or celebrations that we will be attending.

Each activity is numbered and so each year I sit down at the end of November and map out our Advent journey. Each day is assigned an activity and a small card with a number is placed into the calendar for each day. Then as we go through Advent we pull out a numbered card each day and ‘discover’ what activity we will be doing each day.

Over three years of preparing our Advent calendar I have more than 24 activities so I rotate a few annually and this will no doubt change as our family continues to grow and outgrow some of the more toddler friendly activities.

Below is my current Advent Calendar lay out, with links to each activity on our website. As Advent starts on a different date each year, you may need to make the adjustment for St Nicholas’ feast day. Hope you find some inspiration below!