Advent adventure

Every year, about a month before Christmas holidays, I put up different advent calendars for different level classes ,in our classroom….

I am writing about my most favourite ones so far, below….

THE ENVELOPES ADVENT BANNER

I need:

24 small envelopes

24 wooden christmas or clothes pegs ( which can be decorated with paint and glitter)

Ribbon

24 pieces of card or postcards

Instructions:

To decorate the envelopes, I use christmas stickers but, another nice idea is to ask the students to draw on them or paint them, beforehand…

With a pen, I write the numbers 1-24 on the envelopes

To fill in the advent calendar I either use printable capital letters or decorate 24 postcards with the letters myself , as follows:

Envelope 1- W, envel.2- E, env.3-W, env.4- I, env.5 -S, env.6-H……etc

When done, we have the sentence: WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

I usually pop something else into the envelopes.I often put pictures with Christmas vocabulary for my little ones, or christmas jokes for the older students.

To use the advent banner:

Each day, I take down and open that day’s envelope and peg up the card instead. By Christmas Eve ,the banner will read WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

I usually decorate a further 7 envelopes adding the numbers 25-31.I make 7 cards .One decorated with a star, 5 with each of the words AND,A,HAPPY,NEW,YEAR, and the seventh with the date of the New Year! I peg these envelopes at the end of the advent banner and reveal the cards inside in class, the very last day, before schools close for Christmas…

THE CUPS ADVENT CALENDAR

Clips: I use mini clothespins or Christmas pegs, binder clips, paper clips etc…

1. Affix number sto the cups

2. Attach to the ribbon

3. Fill cups with messages, christmas jokes, loot etc..

4. Show to kiddies and have fun time each morning checking out the new surprise!

You can use anything to fill in the cups…

It can be a little treat, it can be a note about an activity we’ll do that day. e.g. paint an ornament for the tree, watch a holiday movie, sing a christmas song but, here below, I am sharing with you some Game-surprises, I have used for our advent cups this year:

A. Santa says (similar to Simon Says)

It’s a fun game to play with young students

B.Pass the ornament game

We need a straw for each child. we use ornaments cut-out of tissue paper or real ones.

Pass the ornaments down the line , teammate to teammate, by inhaling and exhaling on the straw to hang on or release the ornament. no hands1

C.Pin the nose on Frosty or Rudolph

Blindfold the player, spin’em around and let them try to stick the nose where it’s supposed to go. Give a sticker for the player who gets the closest.

D. Christmas Scramble

Choose a Christmas word such as : Christmas, Candy, Cane, Santa Claus, Reindeer…Write the letters of the word on individual index cards. Do this two times, making two sets. Put each set in a paper bag. Two teams.Give each team a bag. The first team to decipher what the word in the bag is wins.

E.Snowball dance

Better for 5th or 6th graders or high school children.

All the girls stand on one side, the boys on the other.One girl and one boy are chosen to dance in christmas music for a minute while the rest of the class are singing along. Then, a signal is given and the girl and the boy choose new partners. This continues until everyone is dancing.Great to teach Christmas songs, too!

F. Tongue Twisters

Say each phrase three times as fast as you can. A christmas sticker for everyone who tries.

Santa sings shining star songs

Sally skis super slow

Tip-top tiny tot toys

Sally’s striped stocking’s stuffed slightly

Santa’s super souped sleigh swiftly slides sideways

One of the teams, working on our Advent Cup ,surprise Christmas Games!

Candy cane cookies keep kids coming etc

G. Book exchange

Inexpensive gift wrap for each child

A christmas book

Children set in a circle, holding a wrapped book. A Room Mother reads A Christmas story. I prefer the Gingerbread Man story.

Every time the word “ran” is spoken they pass the book to the person on their right. Continue doing until the story is over. Whoever has the book on their lap at the end of the story is theirs to keep and open.

Many activities can follow this amazing story telling game! Draw the story, retell the story, change the story ending, write the story summary etc, according to the class level!

H. Word Find

Take a Christmas related word such as: Christmas, Candy cane, etc and find as many smaller words from it as posiible , working in teams, before the time runs out. Example: Christmas-sit, is, his,miss,rat,this,math,rim…

The team with the longest list of words, win christmas stickers.

I. Christmas twenty questions

The teacher says ” I am thinking of something…” The children try to quess what it is by asking no more than 20 questions ,that can be answered “Yes” “No”or “I don’t know”.The student who guesses correctly is next up.

Example: Frosty

I am thinking of someone who wears a hat. He loves snow.He’ll melt if it’s too warm outside

Clues should be age appropriate for the children playing

More ganes ideas you could also find on

http://holidays.kaboose.com/xmas-party.html