Advent Activities

We started December 1st with our Christmas Book advent.  Each day the kids got to open a book that we read and did an activity to go along with it.  Some of the activities were planned going out events, others were crafts, snacks or projects.  It was harder to fit them in this year with Brielle being in school, we tried to open the book right after she got home, but when we had other things going on, it made it very busy.

I started to track which books we opened and what we did for the activity for each day, but didn't follow up with it, so I don't have a good record, but here are a few to remember for next year.

On December 1st we had Breakfast with Santa at our church, so that morning we read the book How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky 

After reading Henry Bear's Christmas by David McPhail we made paper chains (we did this last year as well)  I asked the kids if they wanted to make a countdown to Christmas, but they were having so much fun their chains grew and grew until they made a garland that decorated the perimiter of our dining room.  

We used the printables available on the Jan Brett website to go along with The Mitten.  The kids colored the animals and I laminated them and the mitten so they could practice lacing the mitten and put the animals in as we read the story.

I saw this idea for snowmen ice cream and immediatly knew it would be a perfect activity to go along with The Hawaii Snowman (by Christine Le).  I let the kids decorate the marshmallow heads using food safe markers.

Other activities from our list, although I don't remember exactly which books they all went with...
Snowman Pancakes
Tree Lighting/Santa Visit at City Hall
Hot Chocolate
Paper Snowflakes
Movie and Popcorn (Yes, Virginia There is Santa Claus, How the Grinch Stole Christmas)
Train Day, Bell Bracelets (Polar Express)
Make Christmas Cookies
Gumdrop Snowflake
Writing Letters to Santa

Lacing Stockings

Painting Wooden Sleds

Paper Bag Gingerbread Houses (Gingerbread Mouse by Katy Bratun)

Shaving Cream Drawings (Tacky's Christmas)

Paper Snowball Fight (If you take a Mouse to the Movies)

Cotton Ball Beard (Jolly Old Santa Claus)
Orange Marmalade on Toast for Snack (Paddington's Christmas)