The best family advent calendar! This "advent calendar" serves several purposes - it's a bucket list of holiday activities, it's a few tiny gifts for the kids to get ready for the holidays, it's reminders that the season is about giving, and it's a task list to keep you on track to meet all your holiday obligations - seriously! The basic idea is that every day, we have something for the family to GIVE and something to GET.
We wanted to come up with an "advent calendar" that built on the activities we already had planned plus our Christmas bucket list. We also wanted to hold ourselves accountable to make this the season of giving. The result is a little half-page for each day that includes both a GIVE and a GET activity!
It may seem simple (as it doesn't look super fancy in the first picture there), but to really make the best use of this, you need a couple hours to plan ahead a bit.
First I suggest you make two lists -
List 1: The "GET" list. This includes fun activities you already have booked (e.g. Zoo Lights) plus the things you want to do every season (e.g. make cookies). I've included a list of ideas that I've come up with (also heavily sourced from the internet - you can Google as well).
List 2: The "GIVE" list. This includes both:
donations to organizations: supporting all kinds of causes: books for kids, cards for deployed troops, toys for kids in foster care, decorations for the local retirement home, caroling at the local children's hospital etc. AND
gifts to people we know: including giving gifts to extended family, friends, coaches, teachers, teammates, neighbors...
We have some inspiration in case you need it! (In picture format here and in printable format at the end!)
Second, after your list is complete, it's time to download a new calendar. Even if you have a family calendar (or several...), download a blank page for this exercise. I used this cute one on Canva here.
Also here is William ASLEEP at the calendar template (December is exhausting, am I right?).
This calendar is important because it will serve as the raw data for all things that end up on your advent calendar (plus as a reference for you to have a quick snapshot of all the stuff you promised on the physical sheets so you can prepare).
To fill out this master calendar sheet:
Use one color for "get" and one for "give" so that you can easily see that you have one of each on each day at a glance.
Start by populating everything you already have on the books (e.g. Nutcracker tickets, Zoo Lights tickets, friends visiting etc.). Most of those are probably "get" activities, but we also already had a few nonprofit activities with deadlines that counted as "give".
After you add in the pre-booked events, look up all the school, work, and extracurricular/sports calendars to figure out when 'last days' were across the month. On those last days for each activity, add one "give" activity (give a gift to Coach/Teacher X) on that day and also add another "give" activity a few days before that (buy/make a gift for coach X) - so nothing surprises you!
Look up the nonprofits you want to donate to, and check the deadlines for donations. Use those deadlines to make sure you put that specific "give" activity early enough! And again, since you're using this as your own personal task list, I suggest breaking up each donation into two activities (e.g. one day was 'purchase gifts for toy drive' and another day was 'drop off toys').
Now you can fill in the flexible bucket list items (e.g. drive around and see lights). And it's nice to have it in a calendar format so you can see what is actually reasonable for each day - like you don't want to promise some elaborate activity on a school night with sports practice.
And third - you're ready to create the little sheets for the wall calendar (or whatever advent calendar you use). I created this template -
I printed two copies per page - making it easy to stack the pages and make one quick cut down the middle to have two half-sheets. I've made a PDF here for you to make it easier:
And note that I hand-wrote the actual activities - as this creates a little flexibility if you need to add something later or make any changes.
Here is Molly, fresh from the bath grabbing the first activity yesterday! A note that our actual advent calendar is from our recent trip to the European Christmas markets (posts coming one day...), but there are SO many aesthetic/cute options online!
And fourth, totally optionally, I decided to add in a few small treats on some of the days. Some of the treats were applicable to the activity (e.g. candy canes on the 'candy cane bath' day, cookie cutters on the 'make cookies' day) while others were totally random (e.g. Christmas pencils for homework) - making this flexible to add in things later if I see something in the dollar store I can't resist. :)
Two more printable for you - the header for the pocket calendar plus printable versions of the inspiration.
And that's it! I hope this little upfront effort makes the season a bit more magical for you!! As always, tell me how it goes and if you have any other ideas!
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