Activity Advent Calendar for Kids – Free Printable
Use these free printable advent activity cards to make a super fun activity advent calendar for your kids.
With 24 activity cards full of fun and easy activities and ideas, this is a great way to count down to Christmas with your kids.
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If your kids are like mine, they love counting down the days till Christmas. There is something so special and exciting about opening an advent calendar each day!
You could buy a regular, chocolate filled advent calendar, but if you want to avoid the extra sugar (and the arguments of who’s turn it is to get the chocolate, or having to buy four different advent calendars… or is that just me?) and be inspired to spend some time with your kids, then an advent activity calendar is the perfect option!
How to Make an Easy Family Activity Advent Calendar.
This time of year can be super busy, and while the idea of doing a special activity with your kids sounds great, it can also fill you with a little bit of dread. But making and using a Christmas activity advent calendar doesn’t have to be time consuming or difficult.
You could go all out and sew or craft a fabulous display for your advent activity calendar, and fill it with big, fancy, family outings and activities, or you can keep it simple and use our free printable advent activity cards and choose small, fun, and doable activities.
Your advent activity calendar can be as simple as a stack of these printable advent activity cards and each day you choose one card from the stack and do the activity.
Or you could write a number on the back of each card, or pop each card in an envelope and add a number on the outside so you know which day to open it. This is an easy way to control which activities happen on which days, which is a good idea if you want to include things like decorating the Christmas tree on December 1st, or visiting Christmas lights on a weekend instead of a school night.
Or you could buy a reusable advent calendar like this wooden advent calendar box, or this felt gnome advent calendar, and pop a printed card into each box or slot.
If you’d like to get crafty and make your own advent calendar but you need a little help – check out our Merry and Bright Advent set in the Picklebums shop. It’s ready to download, print and create, and the printable advent activity cards fit perfectly into each pyramid box.
Advent Activity Ideas
When it comes to choosing ideas for your family advent activity calendar, remember that this can be a really busy time of year, and neither you, nor your kids, need a whole lot of extra stuff that may overwhelm you. So stick with mostly quick and easy activities that you know your kids will love, and throw in a couple of bigger family outings or activities that are special to your family.
Also remember that you don’t have to do Christmas themed activities. Any fun family activity is perfect to pop in the advent calendar. Plan a family bike ride, or a favourite dinner, or a visit to the library, or play a favourite board game.
Our printable advent activity cards come with 24 cards with activities already written on them, plus a blank page of cards that you can type (using adobe acrobat) or write your own ideas on.
If you need some more Christmassy ideas to add to your advent activity calendar, check out this list of 50 advent activity ideas for kids and families:
- Decorate the Christmas tree
- Make a Christmas decoration.
- Visit a local Christmas lights display.
- Make cookies for Santa
- Make reindeer food
- Watch a Christmas movie
- Read a Christmas story
- Bake a Christmas treat.
- Have a Christmas building challenge
- Make Christmas cards
- Decorate a gingerbread house (try this colouring page option).
- Donate a gift to charity.
- Make some Christmas wrapping paper
- Make a Christmas gift box.
- Make some fun and funky Christmas glasses.
- Print some Christmas play dough mats
- Write a letter to Santa
- See a Christmas play or show.
- Do some Christmas origami
- Visit ReindeerCam and see what Santa’s reindeer are up to.
- Make some gift tags.
- Make or buy a gift for someone special.
- Set up some Christmas sensory play
- Make some playdough reindeer
- Deliver a gift to a community helper.
- Do a Christmas drawing
- Take a photo with Santa
- Visit local Christmas event such as carols by candle light.
- Make a Christmas garland
- Have a Christmas dance party
- Make paper chains
- Write a Christmas story
- Make paper snowflakes or stars
- Buy a pig for charity… or a chicken, or pencils.
- Play Christmas Charades
- Play roll and dress Santa game
- Sing a Christmas song
- Have a special breakfast or dinner
- Tell a Christmas jokeÂ
- Do some Christmas mazes
- Try some Christmas science experiments
- Decorate a gingerbread man, real or crafty
- Play the Christmas What Am I? game.
- Write a Christmas letter to friends or family.
- Decorate your front door.
- Have a candy cane hunt.
- Set up some Christmas small world play.
- Make some Christmas slime
- Try this Christmas find and colour activity.
- Take a family holiday photo
Free Printable Advent Activity Cards
These free printable advent activity cards will make putting together an family activity advent calendar super easy!
There are 24 activity cards plus a page of eight blank cards so you can add your activities. You can edit the blank cards using adobe acrobat or other pdf reading software, or simple print them and write your ideas by hand (the blue boxes you see in the pdf will not print, they are just to show you where the editable fields are)
You can download these free printable advent activity cards here.
These printables are A4 sized pdf files, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open them. If you are printing on US ‘letter sized’ paper be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options.
Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.
More Advent Calendar Ideas for Kids
If you’d like to make some matching advent boxes to go with these advent activity cards, you can find our Merry and Bright Printable Advent kit in the shop here
If you are looking for even more fun and easy advent ideas for kids, check out these ideas:
Love the idea of Advent Activity cards
This looks like so much fun and I think my girls are really going to love it. Just bought the kit and the pdf has already arrived in my inbox. Can’t wait to start working on it. Thanks for sharing your great ideas!
Thank you for making these available! I love how you used the advent boxes to decorate your tree! We have been using tiny brown craft bags for several years now. I stamped on the numbers in red and green ink, then tie them with red ribbon to a tree shape i make with twine and thumbtacks on the wall. It’s super simple with a bit of a rustic, yet pretty and homey feel. However, I change out advent activities as my daughter grows, and you have both great ideas and fabulous cards! Of course, I think your triangular advent containers are amazing. Pinning for multiple reasons. Thanks for making this so useful and handy!
These are not an editable pdf at this time. I may make that change in the future, but unfortunately I am not able to at the moment.