Our Christmas decorations are up, and I’ve been working on my advent calendar for my kiddos. I’m so excited this year because this is the first year Hudson will really ‘get’ the holidays. Several years ago, I created the first advent calendar and 12 Days of Christmas RACK for my kids hoping to bring more meaning to the Christmas season.
Activities each year include traditional holiday activities (baking cookies, watching Christmas movies, and decorating the Christmas tree), acts of kindness (delivering cookies to neighbors, making Christmas cards for service members), as well as activities in our town (Christmas parade!). Some of our family favorites are Elf Day and Grinch Day. You can find some lists from previous years here, here, here, and here.
We have a really neat advent calendar with pockets:
Here’s a similar advent calendar with pockets available on Amazon. Every year I would just type up a list of advent activities, print them out, and stuff them into each pocket of the calendar.
Last year, I had a brainstorm! I bought some cute paper tags and holiday mailing labels at Hobby Lobby. (Amazon has some similar craft paper tags here and here. and holiday mailing labels here.) Then I printed out the activites on the labels and put them on the tags. This year, all I had to do was decide what to do on each day and put the tags in the pockets. I also have blank tags, so, if there’s a new activity, I can just write it on a tag. This saved me so much time this year!
I’d love to hear about your family’s favorite Christmas traditions!
Karen
PS Find ideas for the Twelve Days of Christmas here!