It doesn’t even feel real to type that out! I mean 25 days until Christmas in 2020. I wasn’t even really prepared for this moment. It snuck up on us so quickly. I was still caught up in the strangeness and the food of Thanksgiving. The hustle and bustle of the ending of the semester.
So, I decided to start thinking about some advent ideas, the day of. Here is what I have come up with for a very hectic strange year. And I have to say they are pretty good. For the record though. WE do have a little advent calendar for my daughter that I didn’t pull out yet, because I had to google today how many days there were until Christmas. With the quarantining for so long, I don’t even know any more. We are like half way there right? Kinda ok.
Advent Calendars
Amazon has tons of advent calendars left with free two day shipping for prime user. So they got you covered if you are lacking there and want like a little toy calendar, book calendar, block calendar (which is what we got) or my personal favorite as a kid the CHOCOLATE calendar. YES big fan of the sweets. So, if you want to order a simple advent calendar, there is definitely still time for that.
A Drawing a Day:
I spontaneously thought this one might be a fun one to do! You could do a Christmas drawing a day with the kiddos if they are really into art. It wouldn’t necessarily need to be a drawing you could do paper folding, painting, etc. Just some sort of small art project to count down the days until Christmas. One place you can find super awesome, and entertaining tutorials for kids is the Art Hub’s free YouTube section under their Christmas and Winter Crafts playlist. I’ll link it here for you. They have 124 project so more than enough fun stuff to get you though! We did their cute little snow-people today! You can check out that specific tutorial here!
Reading through the miracles of Jesus in the bible!
There are 40 miracles of Jesus in the bible (all listed out in different stories in the back of my bible) You could take some time each day and read through the miracles of Jesus’s life and all the things he did each day as we count down through the advent.
Elf on the shelf!
Elf on the shelf is a great Christmas tradition at our house (though our elf has yet to arrive yet. Maybe he is caught up in quarantine or something?) Elf on the shelf is a really fun tradition you can do around Christmas time! Last year out elf even took over the Blog for some of the posts! You can check out all about that here! You can even “request/order” your own elf here!
The Bible Project YouTube:
The bible Project on YouTube has a series of 4 videos designed to highlight some of the more “advent” geared words of the bible. So they are like word studies. they are really short videos and you could watch one a week if you like to gear up for advent. They would make great virtual studies for this 2020 year as well! They highlight peace, hope, love, and joy, and how these words fit into the bible. You can see the playlist here. They are short and amusing for kids and adults a like!
Virtual Church Services:
Many many many churches are putting their sermons on YouTube now! So it is so easy to just pic out a church that you like. You can begin to shop around. Look at ones in different towns or even ones in different states! As we approach Christmas many churches will be doing their advent themed worship and sermons for you to enjoy virtually. So, hop on YouTube and start searching those. This is an interesting dynamic to, because now, to test out a church, you would no longer actually have to attend it to see what their beliefs or how it is ran. You could simply watch it for awhile. Maybe after the pandemic is over, you might decide that’s where you want to go.
Christmas Movies:
We totally already started this one before thanksgiving but between Netflix, YouTube, and Disney+ you could totally watch a Christmas movie every day for 25 days leading up until Christmas if that was your thing. We had a Santa Clause marathon the weekend before thanksgiving where we watched Santa Clause 1, 2 and 3! They are by far my favorite Christmas movies of all time! Definitely the top of the list of must re-watch each year. You can get all of them off Disney+. We have also seen a variety of other movies. I really just need to make a whole post on the good ones (all kid appropriate, I don’t watch movies on my own)! So, it can definitely be done! 25 Christmas movies!
Cookies & Baking
I’ll admit this one might add a few pounds around the middle but you could practice your Christmas baking skills with some fun new recipes. You could try a new one each week, some fun cookie baking dessert etc. I did a cookie baking challenge a few years back on the blog that was super fun!
Christmas Songs:
You could have some fun sing along time with the kiddos, maybe work on learning a new Christmas song a day, or a few new songs a week! This goes great with home-school as well as you gear up for Christmas. You can google the lyrics or sing along to the kids Christmas sing along songs on you-tube.
Hope you all enjoyed some of these nice, stay at home Christmas advent ideas for this year! Stay safe during this season!
Brie
