Kid's Craft Advent Calendar with Printable Stickers

This school year I am down to one kid left home all day. While the other kids are at school it is just me and my three year old. Often this is the time that I work on projects, or run to stores to pick up craft supplies for the projects I am working on. Because he is there with me while I work, he loves working on little projects or making little kids crafts too. 

I like to occasionally pick up some little kid's craft kits from the dollar store, or craft stores, that he can paint, color, or put together. He loves it. 

A few weeks ago I was at Hobby Lobby picking up some supplies for upcoming projects and they had a whole section of kid's craft kits for Christmas. We looked at them and Ben wanted to get them all. I let him choose one ornament to bring home and paint, but it gave me an idea for something to do for him this Christmas. 

I thought it would be really fun to make a little advent calendar activity for him, with a new little Christmas craft or activity everyday. Something fun for him to do while the other kids are in school most days. 

There are a couple different ways you could do this. One way would be to come up with ideas for a bunch of cute little kid crafts, gather the supplies, and put everything together into little kits on your own. 

The second way is to just pick up a bunch of little craft kits and separate them out for each day. 

I had actually originally planned to do a combination of the two. I thought it would be good to have a variety of activities for him to do, some that involved painting (because I know he really likes that), some with coloring, gluing together popsicle sticks, stringing beads on a pipe cleaner, and other preschool crafts. 

In the end I went the easy route and bought a bunch of little kits. I got them from Hobby Lobby but I know you can find similar stuff at Michaels, JoAnn, or any other craft store, or even sometimes at the dollar store. I got it all for 50% off and all of the packs I chose had several different designs in them. Most of them even had multiples, like a pack of 12 ornaments that had 6 different designs, 2 of each design, so I could almost have put together 2 advents with the packs that I bought. I just let my girls have all of the extras though. 

Then I got some little paper bags and put all of the pieces for each day in one bag. An ornament and a string to hang it, or all of the little foam pieces needed to make a character, etc. 

I made some little stickers to print out and cut on my Cricut with the number for each day, folded down the tops of the bags, sealed them closed with the sticker, and put them all in a basket. 

I am excited for him to open each day's little activity. I think he will have a lot of fun with it. 

How to Make a Kid's Craft Advent Calendar

You will need:

• 24 kid craft kits (store bought or put together yourself, examples include foam sticker kits, wooden ornaments that can be colored or painted, paper crafts, and more)
• paper sacks in sizes large enough to hold the items (I used some small sacks in brown and red, and larger lunch sacks)
• Cricut Maker or Explore
• printable vinyl (or sticker paper)
• printer
• basket to hold all of the bags

Instructions:

Upload the Advent Sticker file into Design Space as a print and cut.

Resize so that each page of the stickers is 6" (or the size that you want, at 6" each sticker will be just under 2". 

Use printable vinyl to Print and then cut the stickers, or you can use sticker paper. I used vinyl because that is what I had and it worked perfectly, I can't say how well sticker paper works as I have not used it.

Add all of the pieces for one activity into each bag. Some of the activities I got were a little too big for the small bags so I used lunch sacks for those ones. Seal each activity bag with a numbered sticker. 

Put all of the bags in a basket or box and let your child open one every day.