Over the past few days we’ve been putting together what we think is a really cool project.  The fact that it has been a multi-part project worked on over time has been very engaging, and has stimulated conversation, ideas and motivation (mostly for Ashton and I).  The glitter and paint and cutting and gluing and Christmas-ness of it has been fun for both me and the kids.  We got to think about what we like about Christmas, Ashton got to work on learning and writing numbers 1-25, through the month we get to learn about using a calendar, and our calendar is designed to generate more times of creativity and connection.  The best part of the project for me was, as we were cutting and gluing ornaments from shiny metallic paper, hearing Ashton say again and again, “Mom, this is the best day!”

Photographed below is the advent calendar we created for the season.  This was pretty much an improvisation with a basic idea in mind, but I really do like the way it turned out.

First I cut a tree out of cardboard and the kids painted it.  Later they strung popcorn and glued it to the tree, and added some glitter garland, which later became strands of lights made of metallic paper.  Then we cut shapes out of metallic paper as ornaments to glue onto the tree.  Finally we cut a star out of cardboard, painted it, did a major glitter job on it, and glued it to the top of the tree.

After our tree was done, we set to work on the calendar part of the project.  We cut squares out of paper and glued ribbon and paper on them to make them look like gifts.  Ashton worked hard on numbering the gift boxes (we might have practiced a bit before we wrote on the gifts, as this was her first time writing numbers in this way, but I think the mistakes look like what they are– Ashton using a craft project to learn numbers and writing).  On the back of each gift I wrote a family activity for us to do each day (we all came up with ideas, like make root beer floats, have a game night, watch a Christmas movie, go to the library for and read Christmas books, etc).  We punched holes in the top of the boxes, strung them with fishing line, and hung them from the popcorn on the tree.

I’m excited about the possibilities, learning, crafting and connecting our tree has to offer us each day.