Do you know what Advent is? It officially begins this coming Sunday, November 29.
Advent is the season of waiting for Christmas. It begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and ends on Christmas Eve, but some people celebrate it just from December 1 to 24.
No matter when you observe it, Advent is a time of happiness, celebration, and hopeful anticipation of the birth of Jesus Christ.
Whether you are young or old, waiting is hard. I personally hate to wait.
Counting down helps the time to pass. It gives us something to look forward to every day, and it is just plain fun.
10 Ways to Count Down to Christmas
- Buy an Advent calendar - You can, of course, buy an Advent calendar.
There are dozens of Advent calendars on the market. Most start on December 1, so it's not too late to get one and get started, especially if you have Amazon Prime.
Some Advent calendars are made from cardboard, where you pop open little flaps to reveal scriptures, like the Charlie Brown Christmas Advent Calendar
or paper Christmas ornaments like the Eric Carle Dream Snow Advent Calendar.
Others are made up of 24 toys or pieces of toys, like the the awesome ones from Playmobil (we have the Unicorn Fairyland Advent Calendar this year), the Barbie Advent Calendar, and the Old Time Christmas Village Sticker Advent Calendar.
Some Advent calendars contain candy or chocolate, like this Chocolate Christmas Advent Calendar.
Still others have spaces that you can fill with your own items (candy or small toys or even the daily clue cards from Truth in the Tinsel), like the Kurt Adler Advent Calendar or the Crafty Advent Calendar. - Create a Jesse Tree - I am like the Jesse Tree Queen, right? My FREE book on the Jesse Tree has been saved over 25,000 times! The premise is simple. You do a devotion each day, learning about a character from the lineage of Jesus. By Christmas Eve, you have covered most of the important people in His history. My devotions include children's music, Bible verses, and ornaments to print and hang on the tree as well as examples of the ornaments I created from felt many years ago.
- Countdown Chain - Several years ago, we wrote activities on strips of paper and stapled them together to make a paper chain. The activities we used were:
- Bake cookies
- Wrap presents
- Make paper snowflakes
- Make Christmas cards
- Make foam Christmas trees
- Make a hand print wreath
- Learn & color the 12 days of Christmas
- Make & decorate a paper Christmas tree
- Make reindeer food
- Make a garland from dyed pasta
- Make reindeer from Nutter Butter cookies {we did these two years ago, and they were awesome}
- Make a Christmas tree from an ice cream cone
- Make a gingerbread house (from graham crackers)
- Make beaded wreath ornaments
- Read Who Is Coming to Our House?
- Make popsicle stick ornaments
- Write a letter to Mrs. or Mr. Santa
- Make a kissing ball
- Make peppermint bath scrub to give as a gift
- Make snowman blocks
- Color Christmas presents (from the Christmas tot book)
- Make a birthday card for Jesus
- Make cupcake ornaments for the tree
- Match candy cane letters (from the Christmas tot book)
- Make button candy canes
- Read Bear Stays Up for Christmas
- Celebrate J is for Jesus
- Make a Christmas symbols mini book
- Play a snowflake matching game
- Make a Jesus Loves Me mini book
- Make a birthday cake for Jesus
- Paint our finger nails and toe nails
- Make homemade ice cream
- Make salt dough ornaments
- Drink hot chocolate with marshmallows and candy canes
- Write letters to Ana and Sian, the children we sponsor in Peru and Indonesia
- Make a Gifts for Jesus poster
- Read How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
- Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
- Put up a special tree in the girls' room
- Make festive colored popcorn
- Bake pies (pumpkin with pecan streusel topping, pecan, cherry, peanut butter, peanut butter and jelly, turtle pumpkin, chocolate fudge - even better would be gluten-free versions of all these pies!)
- Make pine cone bird feeders
Your chain doesn't have to have 40 links. 23 or 24 would be much more appropriate.
My friend Maureen also has a printable countdown chain that includes themes like memories and charity and family.
- Make a paper pocket Advent calendar - Eryn from Mamahall shared a tutorial for making paper pockets that contain Christmas-themed activities. Her tutorial includes activities and scriptures to put inside.
- Print an Advent calendar - I found a very simple print and do Advent calendar online. The idea is similar to Eryn's above, but it's a single page and the activities and scriptures are provided.
- Make a craft a day - I love this idea. Bella Dia's author has a Christmas book and related craft posted for each day of the Advent. Truth in the Tinsel from Impress Your Kids is very similar. We started the Truth in the Tinsel crafts yesterday.
- December Daily - The idea of December Daily is to create a scrapbook page each and every day of the month. It's a very, very time-intensive process, but it's really fun. I made it to December 24 last year. I should start this year.
- Unwrap a book a day - Wrap 24 Christmas books, put them in a fun basket, and let your kids choose one to read at bedtime each night of the Advent. Doesn't that sound like fun?
- Glue on Santa's beard - This cute idea isn't available as a printable, but you could do it yourself using the links provided in the post. Basically, you print out a clip art Santa, cut off his beard, and glue it back on using cotton balls. Super easy and loads of fun for your kids!
- Santa's Treasure Map - I think my kids would love to do this all in one day, but you can totally stretch it out to last for the two weeks before Christmas. It's a treasure map. Who doesn't love a good treasure map?!
So that's it! 10 FUN ways to count down the days of December and make the season of Advent a little more fun and interesting for your kids.
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