Every year I fully intend to buy my children one of those beautiful wooden drawer advent calendars. Every year I forget and think that I’ll get one in the January sales for next year instead. And then I forget! Luckily, however, my little people do love a bit of craft. When my eldest was about 2.5 she helped me make one from yoghurt pots which was actually really sweet and lasted us a couple of years. When it got to looking really bedraggled, we recycled it and tried to make one of those plastic cup snowman jobs that was sweeping the internet – complete disaster and really not as easy as it looked on Youtube! Anyway, the last few weeks they have been saving their yoghurt drink bottles for this very purpose. My eldest did point out that it might be difficult to get chocolate/sweets in and out of them which is a fair point – I’ll have to think on that some ….
So, take 24 yoghurt drink bottles – we have the Tesco version but I’m sure any kind will do!
Cut and peel off the plastic wrap/labels.
Use whatever you have lying around to decorate! We had lots of wool and twine left over from a crafty party my eldest had earlier in the year and it does look really effective. Just start wrapping it around from the top (just wrap over the loose end to keep it in place) and either use a glue gun or some pva, or even Sellotape/double sided tape, to secure the bottom piece and then snip off.
We did 8 like this and then rolled some in pva for a full on glitter fest – it is Christmas after all.
The children decided that they would like some wrapped in brown paper with stamps on so we stamped a big section of paper and then cut to fit and stuck on with pva.
These were the trickiest – we couldn’t wrap the whole bottle neatly because of the shape so we improvised with tissue paper and glitter and just wrapped the bottom half.
Added some numbers and voila! Fill with whatever takes your fancy: sweets, chocolate, non-edible treats, challenges …
We had originally planned to tie them with string numerically and hang them but, to be honest, we were a bit crafted out and so decided to arrange them on the shelf out of order for an extra challenge in the mornings (my youngest is very keen to practise her numbers at the moment so I’m taking any opportunity to encourage that!). Who says Advent Calendars should be banned? All that crafting effort surely worked off enough calories for a tiny piece of chocolate (and we’ve covered half the curriculum making ours – totally educational!) xx
The Sisterhood of the Long Boobs 