This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive a commission if you choose to purchase through links I provide (at no extra cost to you). Shopping through these links is one small way of supporting this blog, and for that - I thank you! For more information, see my disclosures here.

Engage in fun advent activities that bring joy and togetherness during the holidays. Unleash the Christmas spirit with our interactive ideas for all ages. Download our free Advent Calendar for extra excitement and lasting memories with your family.

I really love the Advent season. I’ve always enjoyed doing an Advent Bible Study during the season to redirect and set my focus on the true meaning of the season - and now that I have kids, I want to be able to help them find that balance of enjoying the magic of the Christmas season, while also thinking outside of their own little world, even at a young age, to bless others and be thankful for what they have during the holidays!

As much as I really love pre-filled advent calendars, I wanted to find a way to incorporate some fun family activities into our Advent Season, while also enjoying some treats and toys (that aren’t complete garbage), and also have the space for our family Advent Study during the season. So I found a beautiful advent calendar that we can use to put our activities into, got an empty gift box for the treats for each day, and then sat down with my husband to look at our family calendar for the month of December and line up some local events that we want to enjoy and wrote out all of the fun family activities that we wanted to include in each day of our advent calendar! Let me share a little bit more about how I went about all of this…

How to Create Your Family Activities Advent Calendar

Here is my pretty quick and simple process for how I went about setting up our Family Activities Advent Calendar:

First, you will need to find a fillable advent calendar! There are so many beautiful options for an advent calendar that is empty and you can fill yourself and use it for years and years to come. I actually have an entire blog post filled with fillable advent calendar options! This is the one that we got this year. (I also took mine a step further and found a small ornament with a wreath on it that I could disassemble and use on my advent calendar doors. It did not come with the wreath included.)

Brainstorm family activities & small gift ideas. I just started searching for family advent activities, kindness activities, and small gift ideas for stocking stuffers that I wanted to use or give during Advent for the kids and made sure that I had some nice long lists. I just wrote everything down, even if I didn’t think that we would actually do that activity or want to get that small treat or gift idea. Just make a nice big list of things to pull from (obviously keeping in mind what will potentially work for your family).

Create a spreadsheet for your family calendar + advent activities. Next, I created a simple spreadsheet that I could use to map out our existing family calendar for the month of December, and a space to start writing down our activity ideas and whatever treat or gift that I wanted to go along with that day. Some gifts were specific to the activity that we would do that day, but not all of them were. Some will just be small candy treats for the kids or a random toy that I thought they would enjoy. On other days, the advent gift will go along with the activity that we do. For example: on the day that we will have a fun Christmas bubble bath party, I’m making sure to give them each a new bath bomb. It’s still something small and simple, but will hopefully help to create some cherished memories for my kids!

Go shopping for your treats or gifts. You certainly don’t have to be as intentional with your gifts as I was - it could be as simple as finding a variety pack of candies and adding them to each day for everyone to get something, but I wanted the gifts or treats that I was giving to mostly be purposeful for our kids or around our house. (Not just a bunch of little trinkets that might get thrown away). I’m also not looking to spend crazy amounts of money, so some of these items could also be something found around the house (like when we have a Christmas sweater party to go to - I may just have their fun Christmas pajamas ready to go for them to open that morning). Once I had brainstormed and knew if there were specific items that I wanted, I placed some online orders for certain things and then hit up our local Five Below store (but a dollar store or Walmart or Target would also be a great place to look for some of the small treats or toys that you want to include for the kids).

Put it all together! Once I had my spreadsheet all filled in, I created a printout with each of the family activities on it and had that printed and cut into strips to fold up and put inside each of the doors of our Advent calendar. Then I grabbed some simple paper lunch bags and wrote each day onto the bag and filled the bags with whatever treat or toy went along with that day’s activity. I have a small empty gift box that I am keeping behind the Advent calendar that I can fill each night and have ready for the next morning since most of our items won’t actually fit inside the tiny little door on the Advent calendar.

Our plan for our Advent Activities is to have the kids open the Advent calendar each morning - that will give them the family activity for that day, plus a gift or treat to look forward to. And then during dinnertime or just after, we will work through our family Advent Study with verse cards for each day, and light our Advent candles, all in hopes of helping our little kids see and hopefully experience the reverence that comes along with preparing our hearts for Christmas and being thankful for the birth of Jesus.

Family Advent Activities

Here are the activities that we will be doing during December and the Advent season that make sense for the ages of our kids, plus what we know we already have going on in December:

Decorate Christmas trees in your bedroom
Gather toys that you don't play with anymore to donate.
If the weather is nice, take a family walk and go on a scavenger hunt for Christmas decor!
Let's make some fun Christmas ornaments today!
Make paper snowflakes
Make something yummy to take to a neighbor
Family Game Night! Find a game that you can all play together.
Buy a gift for a kid in need (We lined this up on our calendar to go along with a gift drive that we are doing with our church.)
Gather some books and take them to a little library for someone else to find and read!
Sing special Christmas songs at church on stage. (adding this activity where our son has a children’s concert that day!)
Make Christmas cards for your grandparents & your cousins.
Time for a marshmallow fight! Surprise your dad when he gets home from work.
Buy socks & food for a homeless shelter today.
Hop in the car to go find Christmas lights!
Wear fun Christmas sweaters to a party. (My husband has a party with his youth group on the calendar, and I plan to take the kids!)
Visit Santa Claus & tell him what you want for Christmas.
Visit a live nativity tonight & see what it was like when Jesus was born!
Put on your jammies tonight after dinner and get ready for a surprise on the way home! (We’re taking them through a local drive-thru Christmas light show.)
It's time for a special Christmas bubble bath party!
Mix up a special batch of hot cocoa with your new cocoa sprinkle spoons.
Let's read a special Christmas story tonight - it's almost Christmas time!
Take a meal to someone tonight. (We signed up to take a family a meal after the birth of their baby.)
Watch a Christmas movie in Mom & Dad's room.

Here are even more ideas for family advent activities that I think are great ideas, but didn’t fit on our calendar this year:

donate to a local food bank
pay for someone's layaway or their meal at a restaurant
be a Secret Santa for a family in need
take homemade cookies to the police station
make cards for a nursing home
leave quarters at a laundromat
donate pet food to an animal shelter
bake Christmas cookies
go caroling
create a paper link chain to countdown the days to Christmas
start a new Christmas puzzle together
make popcorn garlands
create a Christmas window display
make a winter bird feeder
walk to see local Christmas lights
write a letter to Santa
make a play-doh snowman
design and color wrapping paper (you could use a large roll of brown or white paper and let them color or draw whatever they’d like!)
have an indoor snowball fight
decorate gingerbread houses
go to a holiday play or performance
donate school supplies to a teacher
go ice skating or sledding
hide and seek with candy canes (mom and dad hide the candy canes and the kids have to find them!)
write and give a thank you note to someone who helps you a lot (mail carrier, delivery driver, Sunday School teacher, etc.)

Family Advent Bible Study

The other part of our family Advent tradition will include a family study - something that will be really short since we have little kids but will help us to focus on the true meaning of Christmas. I actually have an Advent Bible Study that I’m going to work through on my own this season, but I also have some resources for us to use as a family this year, as well! I got our family Advent resources from The Daily Grace Co. this year - I love that they have some Advent studies that are specific for the family and that we can adapt with little kids (it’s 2023 when I’m writing this and we have a 4-year-old and 20-month-old).