Christmas Advent Countdown with Printable Toddler Activities

First, I’m sorry I’ve been so awful at posting this week. It’s been crazy. Not only have I been trying to get everything back in order from our trip (who doesn’t love vacation laundry, right?), but all three of us got sick while we were gone. Like can’t-eat-for-24-hours-or-you’ll-throw-it-back-up kind of sick. Ugh. Little Monkey had it Thanksgiving day. I got it on my uncle’s wedding day and had to miss all the hoopla (which was the actual reason we went over for Thanksgiving). And My Mr Right spent the last three hours of the car ride home and all night with a plastic baggie or a trash can gripped in his hands. So, I hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving. As for us, well, there’s always next year… Anyway, let’s move on to the good stuff.

My Little Monkey doesn’t completely comprehend Christmas or Winter at this point. He just thinks mommy is the meanest meanie that makes him stay inside all the time. And as far as the real reason for Christmas, well… the boy barely understands who Santa is, so the deeper doctrine of Christmas is kind of lost on him.

In order to try and stave off some of the boredom this month, I have concocted an activity advent calendar. I threw most of this together in about two days, but there are parts of it that aren’t quite finished. Basically, the idea is that Little Monkey will get to open an envelop every day before Christmas. Inside the envelop is an activity we can do that day. There are a lot of simple things (like make a snowman out of marshmallows, glue cotton balls on Santa’s chin, color and make a lace up stocking) along with a little more involved activities (helping to set the Christmas tree up, for example).

My Little Monkey is of the opinion that if he isn’t moving 500 mph, he’s not moving fast enough, so there are a lot of busy activities too. Like Snowman Bowling and a Snowball Toss. Because there is soo much involved with this, I will be breaking this down into several mini-posts, so you’ll see this snowman again…

You can get the whole list of activities HERE. It’s a Word document. If you have trouble, let me know. I’ll email it to you. All you have to do is print, cut them apart and then, if you get the itch to be an overachiever, glue them to card stock and put each one in an envelop.

Our first activity we will do tomorrow will be to set up and decorate the Christmas tree. I’m a little apprehensive to let Little Monkey help. I’m not sure he’ll like that he can touch while we decorate, but then after that it’s a hands-off deal… Guess we’ll see. Come back for that adventure…

I’ll do another post (hopefully tonight) with some more explanation of the other printable files I’m using with this activity advent countdown. There’s a bunch of them up on 4shared already, so feel free to browse and try to figure some of it out. They are all my original creations, so feel free to use them. Please don’t redistribute them though. If you want to send people here to get their own copies, great. Please don’t post them on your own site though. Here’s the links.

Check out this year’s (2012) advent calendar HERE. More printable activities!

And if you’re looking for gift ideas (I know I’m madly combing the internet…), check out the WHWN Gift Guide.

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