Advent Activity

Last year I made my own Advent calendar for the boys. It was super easy. I bought a kit through Oriental Trading. It was 25 little boxes that I put together & then it had stickers to add - the numbers & some letter ones that spell out a nice little saying on the top. I drop in three pieces of chocolate for each day & the boys love it.

This year I took it to the next level. Sorry, I've always wanted to say that.... ::grin:: I've been reading about how some folks add in fun activities for their kiddos to do each day. I finally managed to get that figured out & added to our advent activities. I'm not sure how the boys feel about them at this point, but so far they are willing participants - for the most part.

Our first day had us making peanut butter & birdseed pine cones. B willingly gathered some but did not want to do the PB & seed part - neither did J. That left N & I making them & they were fun - messy - but fun.

I hadn't actually planned to do a big post on this so there aren't as many photos of us making these as I would have normally taken.

They are super easy though. The boys went outside & gathered 3-4 pine cones each. We let them dry out by the fire since they were snow covered. Then we covered them with peanut butter (using a knife - I'm sure it would have been far easier to put some PB on a plate & roll the pine cones, but...).

After they were all gooey with peanut butter we rolled them in bird seed. As the last step I tied on a piece of bright yellow yarn.

N was pretty proud of what he accomplished. We hung them on a branch we could see from the house. I'm not sure if the birds have found them yet.

Click HERE to read up on some more kid craft ideas for December (winter/Christmas/holiday themed ideas).