Advent Calendar Take Two

Typically, Katelyn and I have decided on posting on Sundays to balance out our hectic schedules...  I asked to post a little early this week, because it's a little time sensitive.

A couple of weeks ago, Katelyn uploaded a personalized, adult style advent calendar.  Today, I am happy to provide a traditional, kid friendly version of the advent calendar.  This is an activity I made for my preschoolers (I work at a religious school, so no worries about church and state separation).  We're learning about advent (bonus craft idea: we are also making our own advent wreaths out of plates painted green and toilet paper rolls painted purple (3) and pink (1)).  Four and five year olds are naturally very excited for Christmas, and so far they have really enjoyed counting down the days (only 23 more to go!!).

Materials:

Advent Calendar Print Outs (see below)

Red/Green paper (or whatever you prefer, that's just what I had on hand that matched the Christmas-y spirit)

Glue

Colored Pencils (or markers or crayons or whatever)

Creative children 

I pre-cut all of the number squares for the kids.  

I glued them all to decorative paper and then I passed them out randomly (with the mentality: you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.  Surprisingly, they did not fight over who got the Santa or who go the gingerbread man).  

The kiddos colored them in with colored pencils. 

Now they are ready to be displayed.  In our classroom, we have a "dramatic play" center (play kitchen, dress up, etc).  In the home, we put up a green-butcher-paper Christmas tree, where we are taping up the advent calendar.  I will upload pictures later, when we have a few more days up.  They all love their Christmas tree advent calendar and cannot wait for when we will get to the number that they decorated.

Feel free to save the advent pictures to your computer and print out for own use!!  Hope everyone enjoys.  If anyone uses them, I would love to see pictures of the finished product!!

Print outs:

Or download the PDF for the exact sized documents.

To visit some wonderful places where this craft was linked, see oh the places we go!

 

Advent Calendar

Yes, it is most definitely October. And yes, I think it's outrageous when Christmas music plays before Remembrance Day (November 11th in Canada). Actually, if I see a HINT of Christmas before December 1st, I get annoyed. Christmas (aside from the Christian/Pagan/Festivus thing) should really be about love, generosity and amazing food.

However.

My boyfriend of over three years, Lars, has decided to pursue an opportunity which would mean that he and I would be living on different continents and eight time zones apart. For at least five years. Though I am not pleased with the circumstances, I am extremely happy for him and at the current moment, we have decided to take advantage of Skype and e-mails and all of the wonderful technology available to us in this age.

Me and Lars

This still means that he won't be home for Christmas. And he will also not have a fixed address to which I can send a present to, at least for now.

And so, while I still had his presence until Friday, I wanted to give him something that he would be able to pack with him and yet enjoy a wicked, love filled present to enjoy while away from friends and family this holiday season. But I had only 2 days to create it.

Mission: Create a small, meaningful, thoughtful, quick to make, personal and awesome Christmas gift in a minimal amount of time.

It's pretty difficult to fulfil all of those requirements. And then I thought: ADVENT CALENDAR.

For the travel-friendly version, this requires a printer, a digital camera, scissors, glue and a pen.

Canon (the printing company) has fabulous envelope templates that were just what I needed. I chose the ones that I wanted from here and printed them 2 per page, so that I would get small mini envelopes. You can make your own envelopes, but I was extremely pressed for time. These ones were great for that! (sorry for the picture here, bad lighting)

After cutting them, I assembled them just by cutting the templates out and using a glue stick. Each template also comes with what looked like seals, so I cut my favourites and glued them on the top flap.

What I ended up with was 25 mini envelopes complete with seals!

Inside each mini envelope, I put a picture of some inside jokes, fond memories, things that he likes and inspirational quotes along with messages of love and support. Then I glued the bottom of the seals to close up the envelopes.

In the end, I bundled them up with parcel string for a quaint take on this advent calendar.

Mission: Accomplished.