Family Countdown to Christmas

This post is an entry for Scribbit's Winter Bazaar.
You know those advent calendars that come with a tiny piece of chocolate about the size of your fingernail? Well...we came up with a better idea for this year.
In years past we have seen advent calendars, the kids make a paper chain at school and each day of December we take one chain off until we get to the top and then its magically Christmas! When I was a youth we made an advent candle that came with a list of scriptures and each day of December you burned the candle down a little bit and read a scripture that had to do with Christmas. Those are all great ideas. I am not discounting any of them in any way. This year I thought up a way to have some family togetherness in addition to the excitement of counting down.
You can certainly make a calendar for this activity if that's the way you want to go, but my idea involves using a jar, a bowl, or any container you can fit 24 small pieces of paper in.
First of all, I would recommend looking ahead in your calendar for the month of December. Are there school concerts to attend? Other family obligations? Sporting events? Make a list of things you are already committed to doing for the month.
Next you need to come up with 24 activities to use for the countdown. The beauty of this is that you can tailor fit it to the amount of time you have to spend on a given evening. If you will be busy all evening and only have half an hour or even just 15 minutes to devote to an activity, that is just fine. All you need to know is about how much time you will have each evening or day to devote to a family activity, and then choose short ones or long ones according to your needs. Write the activities on a piece of paper. I recommend color coding. For instance, red paper could mean the activity is in the 15 minute to 30 minute range. Green paper could mean that you have more than an hour to devote to the activity. You can use as many colors as you want to, just make sure you write a key on the lid of your jar that says how long a time is represented by each color of paper, and make sure you put the appropriate amount of each color to fit your schedule.

Some ideas for shorter activities...

Reading a Christmas story at bedtime. Check your local Library and see what they have available. I have heard of people reading a different Christmas storybook for each day of the countdown. Its quick, its relaxing, and its good family time. You can also include reading scriptures about Christmas as part of this.

Watch a Holiday special. We don't get TV reception where we live, but we do have some Christmas and Holiday versions of TV shows on DVD. Garfield, Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph and etc. Many of these are between 20 minutes to a half an hour, and you can rent some of them from the video store if you don't own any yourselves. For us it has been fun to watch shows we loved as children with our own kids.

Share some Christmas Memories. You can look at Christmas photos from years past, and talk about how Christmas was when you were younger. You can also find out your children's favorite Christmas memories and record them in a family journal.

Have hot cocoa with whipped cream and other fun ingredients and listen to Christmas music.

Take fun family photos with a Holiday Theme.

Have a gift wrapping relay race.

Color Christmas coloring pages. There are always coloring pages to be found on the web that you can print out.

String popcorn, cranberries, or make a paper chain...decorate the house a little bit at a time!

Longer Length activities...(an hour or more)

Make Christmas candy. You can get candy molds at your local craft store as well as chocolate melts to use for candy making. Our kids always enjoy making candy as a family.

Decorate goodies. Christmas cookies, gingerbread houses, cupcakes, whatever floats your boat!

Make Christmas Ornaments. Family Fun's Christmas Site is a great resource for finding kid friendly Holiday crafts, decorations and recipes. I will be posting a fun family craft next week. I can hardly wait!

Deliver Christmas treats to friends and family.

Do a family service project. Before we were married and had young children we loved to go and put shopping carts away at Christmas. In the rush of Holiday shopping many people would leave their carts all over the parking lot, and its cold! So we would deliver the carts back to their little stalls in the parking lot so the cart jockeys would have an easier time of it. I don't recommend it for families with young kids because of traffic. There are tons of other family service projects you can do though.

Make Christmas cards. Homemade cards are fun to make, and kids love the opportunity to be creative!

Go caroling! If you are too embarrassed to carol in public, just spend an evening at home singing Christmas songs together.

Watch a Christmas movie. Its a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Home Alone...take your pick! This one is a great weekend activity.

Have a family gift wrapping party.

Make a snowman (if you live where there is snow). If you don't live where there is snow you can print out a paper snowman here or here. Or you can draw your own.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. There are tons of crafts, recipes and other fun things out there that you could use as a fun activity. I would love to hear ideas you have to add!

Once you have your jar filled, just pick the appropriate color of paper for the day you are choosing for. You could even draw them out one day ahead to make sure you have time to prepare, or if you would rather plan ahead, you can simply make up your own advent calendar and list the activity for each day and your kids can still be surprised when its time to reveal the next activity. I hope you have fun with this if you decide to use it!