When I wrote last year’s DIY Advent Calendar ideas for kids, it was a very last-minute post, way too close to Christmas for me to be able to do something properly put together (making use of my vast “collection” of Christmas craft stuff). Apart from selecting a new Christmas story to read every night from the lovely collection I put together from charity shops (which you can find here on my Amazon UK storefront), I didn’t manage to create any other of my ideas but I’ll do my best to create something this year! Even though yet again I’m doing it last minute.
I love the idea of a DIY advent calendar and I was very hopeful that this year will be THE year I will create one. And I am doing one, but it’s not very Instagram worthy but the kids are loving the joy of getting a little surprise present every day, even if it’s a bit disorganised.
If you get to this post because you’re looking for an idea (you might want to do something special for your kids) I’m here for you and I hope one of my ideas will help you!
And here’s the best thing about DIY toy advent calendars: you can figure it out as you go. And sure it would have been best if started on the 1st, but starting now is better than never.
Here are some ideas that I think are great ideas for a DIY Advent Calendar.
Christmas and Winter Books Advent Calendar
This is the only idea that I’ve been managing to replicate every year and I love it. I am not a big fan of ready-made book advent calendars. The books that come in the packages are way too small, they’re hard to read and to be very honest, they become clutter very quickly with not much use by my kids.
So what I’ve been doing for a couple of years is: I go to a bookshop and some charity shops, source enough Christmas and Winter storybooks to make 24 in total (or more – I already have a few books on the theme), empty my kid’s front bookshelf and every day I take one book out and we read that story that day. We then add it to the bookshelf until it’s complete!
The pictures I took last year are pretty “meh” (it’s the technical term), so this is the only semi-decent one I have at the moment but it helps you understand the gist.
And this is probably something you can do without having the complete collection on the first day. You don’t even need the bookshelf. If you have 3 or 4 Christmas/Winter stories (for example with stories about animals in the winter time), you can start with that. And then spend a morning/afternoon or a couple of days going to some charity shops to source the rest of the books you need at pretty decent prices (or source them online).
If you want to be more thorough (or Instagram worthy), you can wrap all the books and put numbers on them to create an actual calendar (like what has been done by See Vanessa Craft on this post – she has a free printable of the numbers which looks lovely). I wish I had the time and will to do it, but, unfortunately, I don’t and I simply put the books in a pile and let them choose which one they want to read each day.
If they want to read up to three books before bedtime (that’s the limit I had to create to avoid bedtime procrastination), we used to re-read the ones that have already been chosen and were sitting on the bookshelf. As we have a bigger collection now, I will manage more or less how many more we can read from the pile so that we don’t run out of new stories every day.
If you would like to do something like this but don’t want to source or own 24 Christmas/Winter stories, I have found this gorgeous book that works as an advent Calendar. It isn’t a DIY advent calendar, but you can still get the magic of reading a Christmas story every day.
The Christmas Chronicles: 24 Stories, One-a-night
I have created the full list of books we own on my Amazon shop just in case you want some to add some to your book collection, even if you’re not doing a full advent calendar.
Find the full list of books here. When you click on them, there’s a direct (affiliate) link to the Amazon shop.
Scavenger Hunt Advent Calendar
When I see the pretty houses and fabric advent calendars, I always wonder: what fits inside those small boxes and pockets?
Honestly, not much. Some options are small pieces of chocolate, sweets or cookies , quite a lot of other things you might get might be too big.
If you’re struggling with this, I’ve got a fun idea for you.
I’m a huge fan of Scavenger Hunts. And it might a really fun moment to create a Scavenger Hunt Advent Calendar. How?
The way I’d do it would be to create a note with clues for every day. Each day, I’d hide the small gift I might have gotten them somewhere in the house (for example under the sofa, or behind a door, or in a basket, etc), and have that day’s note give them clues of where today’s gift might be.
And this can be done with small children too. For a child as young as 2, you can be very direct with your clues (under the sofa, under the table, behind the curtains). For an older child a little more creativity and mystery will be more fun for them, so little riddles with or without rhyme, are a fun exercise for both of you (“Every time you watch TV, you sit on me, what can I be?”). Be as creative as you can.
The greatest thing about this, is that you don’t even need a fancy Advent Calendar. You could simply fold the papers, put a number on them, run a string through it, and hang it on a wall with tape.
If you’re looking for some cute re-fillable advent calendars, find them here.
I’m not doing it this year because I just physically can’t (or I might change my mind halfway through the month, who knows), but I definitely want to do this in the future. Even if just as an excuse to get myself a beautiful looking advent calendar.
Photo Album Advent Calendar
Here’s one thing I’ve noticed since having kids: we take MILLIONS of photos of them, but they rarely get to see them.
I have printed a couple of albums for my kids and they love to get them and look at their pictures every now and then. It’s entertaining and actually makes them happy to see their faces and the faces of loved ones.
So I thought that a great idea would be to create a photo album through an Advent Calendar. We’d select the pictures to print, get 24 envelopes and distribute them throughout the envelopes for them to rediscover what they did throughout the year and enjoy their photos. If it helps and considering the year has 12 months, 2 envelopes per month is a good idea. Considering you’re still in the 12th month, day 23 and 24 needs to be December photos, so you probably would have to get them printed on the 22nd. Otherwise, you could distribute the photos differently and have the last envelope with December photos given to them don’t the 6th of January to celebrate the 12th Day or “Kings’ Day” (Dia de Reyes in Spain). You could also do this for the 12 days of Christmas which makes the photo distribution so much easier: each day is a month of the year.
If you’ve never printed any photos of your kids before, you can create individual calendars for them with separate photo albums. They would be able to create their personalised photo album from since they were born which I think is a beautiful keepsake for them to have and cherish over time.
If you want it be more creative, instead of a photo album it can be a scrapbook too.
Christmas Felt Tree Advent Calendar
Felt Christmas Tree – Get it here
I love this idea and my son has played with one made by my mum when he was 2 years old. He was super entertained by it.
Kids love playing with the Christmas tree and those ornaments rarely stay in the place they’ve been located at for a long time. So the idea with this is to have this Christmas tree put up on a wall or a door, and every day, you can give your child an ornament for them to add to the Christmas tree. And they can decorate them as they please and rearrange the ornaments as many times as they want to. I really loved this idea.
You can buy some felt and create your own tree and decor with some velcro on the back.
Christmas Tree Ornaments Advent Calendar
On the same vibe of the previous idea, you can create a calendar with Ornaments you already own and each day, the kids can place that ornament on your Christmas Tree.
Of course, this means you might have to give up on the idea that your Christmas Tree will be very aesthetically pleasing, but you know: do it for the kids.
If you’re a crafty person (and you have the time), you could also create an ornament with your kids each day to place on the tree. To make life easier, I would create the template for each craft ahead of time, so that it was just a matter of putting it together on the day. Not only it would help with timing contraints, as it would make everything easier to manage.
(Image and idea taken from here. They have other really cute DIY ideas on that post)
Snacks/Sweets Advent Calendar
I follow a brilliant woman on Instagram called Emily (click on her name to follow her on Instagram) and I love the different Celebrations she celebrates around the year and especially the little different things she does around Christmas.
One of the things she does that I will try sort of do this year (I’ll explain below what I’m doing), is a Snacks Advent Calendar, in which every day of the month in the lead of the Christmas, she will have a different snack/sweet for her kids to try. It can be anything from sweets to cakes, to biscuits to chocolates, cookies, you name it.
Sure, this is not an Advent Calendar that healthy diet-strict parents will agree on, but also, we’re not talking about them eating a whole box of chocolates or cookies every day. We’re talking about one new biscuit/chocolate/sweet a day. Which I think it’s fairly acceptable especially when they’re healthy with the rest of their diet and exercise.
In our case, I will be honest: I will cheat when it comes to the “buying” of the stuff. Don’t worry, I am not planning on stealing anything (it’s not very Christmasy I’d say). Well, you know the Halloween sweets the kids have collected for Halloween? In our house, I will randomly let them choose one treat per day after Halloween (always after lunch or dinner, or after afternoon snacks) and not even every day (because again, it’s about healthy balance and if they had something else that day that is less healthy, they skip the day). And, I have to be honest, because the baskets of sweets are not accessible to them, they end up forgetting about their sweets and if they don’t ask for it I also forget to offer. So we usually have a year-long batch of sweets from Halloween every year that go to waste eventually because it’s been too long.
So I’ve decided to include the sweets in the Advent Calendar I’m creating this year and buy a couple of Christmas-themed ones to add to the calendar. It’s a great alternative to the one type of chocolate store-bought options and they get a lot of variety which I think is fun.
P.S. – You can also be quite selective of what you want them to have. So if you’re able and willing to do healthy snacks yourself, that’s a perfect alternative.
Crafts Advent Calendar
OK, so the idea of creating something new every day with the kids sounds like an absolute dream to me. Except, I’m not organised enough to make this happen. I wish I was the ultra-organised type of mum that plans the next day (week or year!) in advance but unfortunately, I’m not, so even if I wanted to be this kind of mum, I know I would fail at this type of advent calendar.
But you’re not me and I think this is a very meaningful DIY Advent Calendar because it promotes time together, creativity and the joy of putting something together each day.
If you’re not that creative or don’t really own that many resources, you can quickly buy some Craft Advent Calendars online and in the shops (this one looks brilliant). But I think a quick search on Pinterest will give you plenty of suggestions of easy to difficult activities you can do with the kids, probably using up resources and things you already have lying around the house.
Puzzle Advent Calendar
More options – here
Last year I bought a Puzzles Christmas Calendar, in which each day I’d get a different puzzle to complete that I could glue to create tree decorations. It was super sweet and my kids loved helping me complete the Calendar.
The suggestion of creating your own puzzle advent calendar is a bit different and it’s the one I’m making this year. I bought a Christmas-themed puzzle, and I’m going to put it together. I’ll then separate bits of it to create the Advent Calendar. So I’ll select a corner of the puzzle to put in a bag, then select the section next to it and so on. They need to be adjacent parts of the puzzle or else it’s quite frustrating.
It is a bit more work and you probably have to make the puzzle in a hidden location when the kids aren’t around, but it’s quite a fun activity to make together each day and see the puzzle coming to life as you go.
Kindness/Good Deeds/Family Activities Advent Calendar
I think that no matter what calendar you might be doing this year, this is a great idea to add on the side. Or it can be done on its own, and it will still be a great idea.
There are a lot of ready-made calendars out there that you can purchase on Etsy and on Not on the High Street, get on Twinkl (if you’re a member) or simply create your own in whatever way you find appropriate.
If you decide to make your own and don’t know where to start, you can get a lot of ideas from quick Google Search when searching for Kindness advent calendar (which will give you a more Catholic/Christian based idea), Good Deeds calendar (which is a Ramadam advent calendar) or a Family Activities Advent Calendar. There are lovely suggestions on all options, that can apply to any person of any or no faith (and some things that will be more specific to each religion).
This is definitely something I want to implement for my children.
The advent calendar you can see on the picture is from Not on the High Street, and you can purchase it here on the Fearless Flamingo vendor.
Mixed Advent Calendar
You know what’s the best about DIY Christmas Calendars? Is that you can create whatever you want/like.
And if you’re sometimes a bit chaotic like me, a mixed Advent Calendar is a great option. You can do some crafts some days, tree ornaments the other, some photos to add to a photo album, get them some little toys they love on other days, sweets some days/all days… The sky is the limit.
That is probably what I’m doing this year, as I’m finishing this post on the 29th of November and I haven’t put together anything yet. Wish me luck!
Will you create one of these for your kids this year? Will you make a mixture? Several of them?
Are you doing a different DIY Advent Calendar I haven’t mentioned? Please share!
Please let me know!
Hug,
Millia
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