Do you do advent calendars with your kids?
Advent calendars are a fun little surprise every morning leading up to Christmas day that my kids really love. We typically do the Christmas book advent, but we’re visiting family for the holidays this year so I had to come up with something different. My kids are getting older, 10 and 12, so I didn’t want to do toys, and I didn’t want to do sweets because we still have a lot of Halloween candy left. I saw this set of 200+ Rocks and Fossils from National Geographic, and thought it would be perfect for my geology loving kids. I also bought these advent burlap bags to package about 8 rocks or fossils per day. The rock set includes:
- Fossils from prehistoric sea life like Clams, Ammonites, Brachiopods, and Gastropods
- Polished gemstones & minerals like Red Jasper, Desert Rose, Blue Quartz, Red Quartz, Pumice, Snowflake Obsidian, and Aventurine
- 3 genuine geodes, one broken and ready for display, 2 unbroken specimens for you to crack open yourself!
- A full-color learning guide
Are you doing an advent calendar for your kids?
persimmon / 1381 posts
What a fun idea! Right now we just do the disposable ones that are filled with crappy chocolate, but my boys love them. We can’t do the ones with toys because with three kids six and under I cannot add 70+ pieces of essentially junk to my life every december. I eventually want to get a nice wooden one but haven’t found one yet that I love.
pomelo / 5621 posts
I really like the rocks & fossils. The kids have an advent calendar my Oma made when DS1 was a baby. There is a little teddy that can be moved around. When it was just one I did a hot wheels year, another year Thomas minis. Now that DS2 is 3 I don’t want to spend money on nor do I want over 40 little toys!! This year I’m doing chocolate coins.
kiwi / 584 posts
We always use one that my sister and I had when we were little that’s a mouse that moves around in pockets. I put a piece of chocolate in each pocket. I also splurged this year and got the Little People calendar. My daughter is 2.5 and obsessed with Little People. I’m really excited to get started. She’s going to love it! I don’t plan on doing a big one like this every year.
apricot / 457 posts
This is the first year where they are each getting a lego advent calendar. I’ll probably regret it after I break my neck on the little pieces but they’ve been hinting for the last two years that it would be fun to move on to a new advent calendar – we’ve been doing a tiny ornament tree but they’ve outgrown it. This fossils idea seems like a contender for next year!
persimmon / 1495 posts
We started doing advent calendars last year to have a bright spot in the pandemic. The kids have a wooden one that has an activity written on a slip of paper or a small treat for each day. The activities can be small things like “a night time walk with a flashlight” or bigger holiday things like making our gingerbread house. And then DS, 8, does a Lego advent calendar and DH and I each have one with foods. DD just turned 2 and doesn’t have her own yet.