Advent Box Activities

Each year in December, we set out an Advent calendar in our home that has a box to open for each day leading up to Christmas. Inside each box is a special treat for the day-- candy, coins, or an activity idea. The calendar serves a couple purposes: a fun way to count down to Christmas and a way we can build in intentional family time during a busy season. The boys really look forward to opening their box each day, and we've loved creating many Advent memories together each year! I didn't take pics of many of our standard box ideas, like going out for donuts, looking at Christmas lights, breakfast in bed, or movie night. Instead, I just have photos of some of the bigger, unique events that we did in 2018.

A "Grinchy" Christmas

I was so excited to see that our public library was hosting this fun, free event for Christmas-- a showing of the old cartoon version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jaden and Cody had yet to see this short movie that I grew up loving, so I couldn't wait for them to see it too. 

The library gave out free snacks too (popcorn and candy) before the show. Look at Cody waiting for the "all clear" to get his treat! ha!

After the movie (which Cody and Jaden enjoyed almost as much as Mommy!), the boys got to make a grinch ornament. They stuffed green pom-poms into a clear plastic ornament and stuck a heart on the outside. It was a cute little keepsake from a fun event!

Half-Birthday Treat

For the boys' half birthday on December 2nd, they brought in birthday desserts to share with their class-- frosted brownies with sprinkles for Cody and scotcheroos for Jaden. As part of their Advent box treat, Daddy also brought in a McDonalds lunch for them to enjoy.

Home Depot Build

The December kids' workshop at Home Depot was a Christmas sleigh. We figured these sleighs would make festive decorations in the boys' room for Christmas. The boys were excited for another building project.

The kit even came with a reindeer to steer the sleigh.

Both boys were eager to paint their sleigh after they were done building.

They were very proud of their final products and each wanted a special pose next to their sleigh. :)

German Festival

Attending this semi-annual festival in our area has become a December tradition for our family. We bought a set (small) number of tickets for the kids and let them each pick out 3 or 4 rides to go on. Adley was thrilled about the carousel!

The boys' favorite was this random spinning dog ride that they enjoyed last year too. They got it spinning quite fast!

Mommy joined the boys on this ferris wheel ride. We got a beautiful view of the night lights. It was a bit chilly for us up high though!

We let the kids pick a special treat to eat too. They ended up trying Dippin' Dots for the first time. Not surprisingly, it was a hit for all three kids!

While we ate, we listened to this local German band perform a few songs. We especially loved hearing the yodeling and the rendition of Edelweiss on the musical saw (see videos below). Amazing!

The chilly evening had rain in the forecast, so we brought along our umbrellas. We ended up not needing them (for rain anyway), but Adley didn't want to let go of hers! She screamed when we tried to take it away for the picture, so we settled on an umbrella + happy toddler picture rather than a tantrum picture sans umbrella. Good choice, I think. :)

Little Beakers

Jason and I thought that having a Mommy/Daddy date with the boys would be a fun new Advent box activity idea for this year. We decided that Daddy would take the boys to go play tennis one day, and Mommy would visit Little Beakers (a kids' science lab) with them. I've been wanting to take Jaden and Cody to this place ever since my sister told me about it a few years ago! It ended up being so much fun! We paid for a full hour's time in the lab, during which the boys could  choose to complete as many science experiments as they wanted. The boys' first pick was to make slime. We had to gather all our supplies and then follow the step-by-step directions carefully.

The above pictures were of a beach-sand type of slime that was very wet and gooey. The boys chose immediately to make a second type of slime which was made with shaving cream. This one was very puffy and much less messy to play with.

Then, we moved on to a new lab station and watched pepper "dance" with static electricity.

Our next experiment was probably the boys' favorite-- watching Coke fizz and erupt out of the bottle after dropping in a Mentos mint.

For our next experiment, we poured oil and water into a large flask and then observed what happened when we dropped in some food coloring. It was amazing watching the food coloring pass right through the oil and then only disperse once it hit the water!

Our last experiment was using a mortar and pestle to grind cereal into fine powder and then trying to pull out iron with a magnet. I didn't get any pictures of this last one since the boys lost interest with it fairly quickly. Overall, though, Cody and Jaden really seemed to enjoy their time here. I was excited about all that they learned too, not just about the experiment results, but simply about the process of conducting an experiment and following step-by-step directions. This will definitely be a place to visit again!