Our Christmas Activity Advent Calendar

Our Christmas Activity Advent Calendar; everyday until Christmas, our toddler will open a hanging card to see what fun activity or adventure we will be doing that day! Chocolate free advent calendar idea!

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Hi beauties!

Today I am sharing the advent calendar I made for my two year old daughter! I absolutely love how this turned out and I think every parent with young children (that want to avoid the traditional chocolate advent calendars) should definitely make a countdown calendar!

I will admit, this advent calendar did take some time putting together, only because I made everything from scratch. I will definitely be saving the frame for the next years to come. Also, I am on maternity leave this year with our second baby girl so I have the extra time! Also each activity probably takes a little more time then some parents have, and I totally understand that! You can personalize and gear your advent calendar to suit you and your families lifestyle!

This is the first Christmas that my daughter will start getting into the Christmas spirit. I know she probably doesn't fully understand what is going on, but these are memories she will be able to relate back to some day.. and if she doesn't remember, my husband and I definitely will!

Counting down to Christmas has never been so fun! Something to look forward to, every single day until Christmas morning. We have so many activities picked out and I will share everything we are doing here in this blog post with you all!

I will admit, I can not take full credit for this activity advent calendar. I first came across it on instagram and then I found some more similar ideas on Pinterest. I obviously took my own creative spin on it but a lot of the credit belongs to the beautiful mamas on Pinterest!

So lets start putting together this cute Christmas activity advent calendar!

The Christmas Activity Advent Calendar:

Materials Needed to Make the Activity Advent Calendar:

Vintage frame
Black Spray Paint
Chicken Wire
Staple Gun
Small Clothes Pins
CardStock (I used kraft but you can use any colour)
White Paint Pen
Single Hole Puncher
Twine or Festive String/Ribbon
Christmas Bow
Faux Garland

How to Make this Christmas Advent Calendar:

Ok so I will admit, I had this frame already saved from our wedding. We used it as our seating chart! So glad I saved it because it came in handy for this DIY advent activity calendar.

How we made it was super simple. We went to the thrift store and found an old vintage frame. I think it cost us around $10. We popped out the glass so it was only the frame. Then we spray painted chicken wire black, and stapled it to the back. I then hot glued a faux garland to the top and finished it with a beautiful Christmas bow!

To make the actual advent calendar portion is what took me a while. I cut out 25 different sized cards from Kraft Cardstock. I then single hole punched the top left corner of each card. Once all the cards we completed, I wrote numbers on the front used the white paint marker. I tried to make them all look somewhat like calligraphy but I failed miserably haha at least they turned out half decent!

Once the paint numbers dried, I started working on the inside. You can find the list of toddler friendly activities I chose below. I wrote them all in basic black permanent marker but you could also use the white paint marker to make it consistent.

With each card, comes something for the activity. I may have hung an ornament to hang on the tree, or a festive cookie cutter. I also have a little Christmas sack sitting under the advent calendar that I will fill each night with the object for that day. So for example, day 1 is new Christmas PJs, so I will have the PJs in that sack for her to open.

I took a piece of twine to hang each card on the chicken wire using a mini clothes pin. If you cant find clothes pins you can also just tie them right to the chicken wire. Or you could skip the twine or ribbon all together and just pin the cards right to the chicken wire.

Have fun with this project, make it personal, add family traditions and design it to fit your home decor so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb! I have seen this done on antique ladders or hanging from a branch on the wall. Use what you have around the house or get creative if you have the time to make something new!

The Toddler Friendly Activities:

The activities I chose for our advent calendar range from full day adventures to small little things. I wanted to mix them up because I knew somedays we wouldn't be able to go on a crazy wild adventure.. life gets busy and I also didn't want our December revolving around this advent calendar haha

I wrote a post earlier about 50 ACTIVITIES TO DO WITH SMALL KIDS THIS HOLIDAY SEASON. I wrote this while I was coming up with our list of advent calendar activities, so if you are needing some inspiration, head to that post to see other activities other then the ones I chose!Get Christmas tree

PLEASE NOTE: these are not in any specific order, so you can rearrange them based on your schedule. For example, you may want to choose the larger activities for the weekend rather then a week night.

Christmas PJs - I bought the girls matching Christmas pajamas that they will get on the first day of December to wear frequently throughout the month! We are also doing family pajamas for Christmas eve and Christmas morning. We will open one present Christmas eve and it will be all matching pajamas and a new Christmas book to read.
Make Homemade Hot Chocolate - I thought it would be fun to make some hot chocolate after our usual afternoon walk outside. It is getting so cold out so hot chocolate sounds real nice, especially after playing in the snow, sledding, ice skating or building a snowman!
DIY Christmas hand ornament - I bought two of these little do it yourself hand ornaments to make with the girls to hang on the tree this year. It will be fun to look back at these ornaments each year to come!
Drive to look at Christmas lights - Our city does a Christmas light festival every year so we will hopefully be able to drive around and look at these lights one night! Its hard with younger kids because bedtime is 7pm in our house, so it doesn't leave much time to look at lights after dark!
Christmas Tree Craft - I thought this Christmas craft would be fun for our daughter and also one that we could hang on her mini Christmas tree in her room!
Make Paper SnowFlakes - These are such an easy craft to do. I also think it would be cute to tape them to our windows. My daughter LOVES displaying her art work around the house so she will LOVE this.
Make a Gift and Card for Teacher - Our daughter is in nursery school and I thought she would have fun making a card and gift for her teacher for Christmas. I am still trying to figure out some cute ideas for this one, so I have been hitting Pinterest for some ideas!
Bake Cookies - Baking is one of our favourite things do to! We plan on baking LOTS of Christmas cookies this month for all our friends and family! Everyone loves holiday treats!
Deliver Baked Cookies - We need to share all our baked goods so they don't go to mamas hips! We will probably do little tins of cookies and give them to friends and family!
Decorate Gingerbread House - This is a must for Christmas traditions! I definitely wont have time to bake our own, but sometimes store bought kits are just as handy!
Deliver Christmas Cards - A lot of our friends and family live near by, so we might drive around and personally deliver some of our Christmas cards instead of mailing them. We like to go for drives, it gets us out of the house for a bit! Christmas music + hot chocolate for the road! Also, incase you were wondering, we ordered our cards from Minted. My all time favourite stationary website EVER!
Write a Letter to Santa - Obviously our two year old daughter doesn't know how to write or even what to wish for but I will help her write a card to Santa and mail it! Visit Santa would have been on this list but we already did that at the end of November!
Make Cotton Ball Snowmen - Another simple craft idea for young children!
Read a New Christmas Book - Reading a new Christmas book is always a fun activity! Even if you don't have a new book, you can always read an old one or even write your own!
Christmas Tree Waffles - Making a fun Christmas inspired breakfast is a must this month! Or even every day leading up to Christmas hehe I also bought a cute candy cane mold for pancakes.. oh the Christmas things we will get into this month! So excited!!
Wrap Presents - Wrapping presents and gifts together is always fun for kids and really sparks the Christmas spirit! Play some Christmas music and dance around while wrapping your gifts!
Make Concrete Hand Prints Stepping Stones - I saw this gift idea and thought it was SO cute, so we are going to try and recreate it for the grandparents this year. We will see how it goes!
Make and Deliver Candy Bags to Neighbours - We are going to make little gift bags to put in a few of our neighbours mailboxes this year! Still have to decide what candy or goodies we will be putting in the baggies..
Make a Paper Chain Garland - This is another SUPER easy craft idea for young children. I think my daughter will be able to handle this craft no problem, and we can hang them along the railing of our staircase! She will love having it on display. We just need to pick up some green and red construction paper! DIY Christmas decorations are so fun!
Visit Library To Read Christmas Books - We love going to the library so why not make it our visit Christmas themed! She will love reading these books and even checking one our two out to bring home!
Donate to Local Food Bank - This day we will go through our pantry and collect some food, an old toy (or multiple) and household items to bring to our food bank and salvation army to help those in need. I want to teach our daughter at a young age what it means to help others and give back to the community. An act of kindness is a must this time of the year.
Watch Christmas Movies All Day - Sometimes you need a down day, especially if it is a snowy cold day.. nothing feels better then getting cozy in your sweats and watching Christmas movies all day.. so I made sure to schedule this into our activities! How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Christmas Story, Polar Express and Elf are a few of our favourites!!
Bake Cookies for Santa - getting close to the big day we will need to bake some more cookies for Santa! These cookies will be ones that our daughter can fully decorate for fun too. She can get creative, messy and covered in green + red icing!
Christmas Eve Mass - Every year we go to Christmas Eve mass in the evening before Christmas. Our daughter loves church and will be excited to know she gets to go before bed one day too!

There you have it folks! I hope you like this Christmas countdown calendar idea for young kids!

Everything you need to make and create this DIY advent calendar I made for our two year old daughter! I cant wait for her to dive into the cards and see what activities I picked for her. I hope she has as much fun as I did making it!

If you liked this post, make sure you check out some of my other Christmas DIYs:

Merry Christmas!