Christmas Book Advent Calendar Upgrade

Ever since Xander was little, I've done the Christmas Book Advent Calendar that has been circulating Pinterest. The idea is that you wrap 24 (or 25) Christmas books and the child gets to unwrap one every day leading up to Christmas. This year, I decided to upgrade how we do it A) to make it more special, B) to make it more environmentally friendly and C) to make it MUCH easier on myself in the future.

That first year, we didn't have enough Christmas books, so I used several "winter" books or other books I could kind of connect.  Over the years, we've collected more than the necessary 24, mostly second hand, so now have to open two on a few of the days. (I use the same books every year).

I used to wrap each book, every year. It took a long time and created a lot of wrapping paper waste.  Since most wrapping paper isn't recyclable and I've been trying hard to minimize the disposables we use, I made some simple cloth bags for the books. To be even more environmentally friendly (and economical) I used tablecloths I found really cheap at Salvation Army for the fabric.  I even had enough left over for a few bags to use for regular Christmas presents.

Now believe me, I am not professional seamstress.  The bags are very basic and took more ironing than sewing. I was worried about bending the thing paperback books when cinching the bags, so I made several of them extra tall, and floppy, as a result. Altogether, though, I think they look very festive.

The best part is, I never have to wrap them again! No cutting, folding or taping!  Just throwing them in a bag and tying the ribbon, where I'll store them for next year. 

You might also like my other Christmas Resources

DIY Color Matching Eggs

I love being able to recycle or repurpose things, so I had fun making these color matching eggs.  I used some left over Easter eggs and some left over white felt.  I cut the felt into some odd shapes and then used fabric glue to attach little felt circles to the eggs.

For a little extra fun, I cut an egg carton in half to put the eggs in.  Archer loves opening it up and taking all the eggs out.

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Gross Motor Development Game for Colors and Shapes

Every kid is different, so I find myself trying to adapt learning activities to Archer.  He enjoys moving! To practice our colors and shapes, I made him this Roll and Find Gross Motor Game for colors and shapes.

Making the Game

You will need felt in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, scissors, the printable dice and the shape templates. To make cutting easier, I pinned the template to two sheets of felt so that I could cut multiple shapes out at the same time (you could easily use staples if you don't have pins). I made each shape in two colors, but you could easily make shapes in each color and play with all three dice at once!

Print the free dice and templates HERE!

Playing the Game

There are three dice, one with colors, one with shapes and one with actions (skip, tiptoe, etc.). For now we are just doing either shapes or colors.  When he gets a bit older, we will add in the action die. I might also make more felt shapes, so that he has to find the correct piece with both color and shape. 

Print the free dice and shape templates here!

Archer is only 14 months, but he did much better than I would have expected.  He did eventually get distracted by the stars, because he is a little obsessed with that shape.  He wanted to carry them around instead of stepping on them!

DIY Magnetic Advent Calendar

This year I really struggled with Advent Calendar ideas.  We always do our book advent activity, where I wrap 24 of our Christmas and Winter themed books and Xander gets to open one each day (we've done this every year and he's still enjoying the activity at 7 years old).  

The last two years I've done a Lego Advent Calendar, but it required remaking the envelopes every year.  He liked it, but I was ready for something different, and slightly more reusable.

This is what I came up with:

I used magnetic spice containers (similar to these) that I got from the Dollar Tree.  I liked the Dollar Tree ones better because they were wider and shallower (and cheaper).  Then I use the bottom of the container to trace circles on card stock and filled in the "tree."

The containers are big enough to put a few fun sized candy bars.  This year I put in some mini Pokemon figurines I got super cheap on Amazon.  I put two in each container and Xander has loved opening them so far.  In the future I could put other little toys, or even something for Xander and something for the new baby.