Advent Activities

Children are going to be eating enough chocolate over Christmas, so if you don’t want to start them on 1 December with the standard chocolate advent calendar, how about doing something different this year? A few ideas below to build up to the excitement of Christmas……

Build a nativity

Each day make another piece of the nativity scene, and gradually build up your model every day until Christmas. It doesn’t have to take very long, for example:

1 Dec – get a cardboard box, cut off one side, and let the children decorate it for the stable
2 Dec – collect some grass, and leave it to dry, so it can be used as straw
3 Dec – make some lambs. Use cotton wool balls, draw on their eyes with black pen, & matchsticks for legs
4 Dec – make some shepherds or wise men or Mary/Joseph – for all the people, cut out a shape from card, leaving a rectangle tab under their feet, so that it can be turned backwards as a stand

etc

Handprint advent wreath

Draw around your children’s hands at least 8 times and cut out. Use green paper or get them to colour them in afterwards, to make green leaves. Cut out a disc of cardboard, and stick the hands around the edge of the disc.

Roll up pieces of coloured paper (or plain paper that has been coloured in by the kids), to make a thin tube. Make 4 of these to be candles. Stick on some orange/yellow paper to be the flame.
You could make a candle each week, and build up to the 4 weeks of Christmas, ‘lighting’ the last one on Christmas Eve.

Advent paper chain

Make a paper chain, with 24 links of paper strips taped together. Number each from 1 to 24. And write an activity for the children to do on that day. For example, make/write Christmas cards, buy present for xxx, decorate the Christmas tree, hang up the cards, collect evergreens from the garden to decorate the picture frames, wrap up presents, make/write gift tags, bake some Christmas shaped biscuits etc!