Family Fun - 4 Benefits for Using Advent Calendars with Kids

There are many different types of advent calendars to aid in counting the days until Christmas. Most of these calendars start on the first day of December and continue all the way until either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, with a window to open or a pocket to check for each day.

I have seen many different kinds of advent calendars, many with other added learning benefits. Lego advent calendars teach kids how to follow a diagram to put together a small item that adds to a larger Christmas scene.

An advent calendar my family had growing up helped us learn about the Christmas story, as the calendar had an item for each day to add to a nativity scene.

I've seen other interactive advent calendars that have other kinds of different activities for each day. These calendars all have their own uses too.

But even the chocolate advent calendars, where there is just a chocolate to eat each day, have their benefits too.

As I've been doing an advent calendar with my boys this Christmas season, I've noticed a few things that have made me think I should keep doing these every year with my kids.

1. Advent Calendars teach children calendar skills. As my oldest son who is three years old has been doing the advent calendar this year, he has picked up on some different calendar skills. Since the numbers on the advent calendar match up with the date, he now talks about what the date is. When I went to pick him up from his nursery class last week, his teachers said, "He was teaching us all about the calendar today." They had a calendar up on the wall that my son had apparently noticed and scooted a chair over to. He climbed up on the chair and was pointing out what day it was and which day was Christmas, which he knew because of which number was the last number on the advent calendar.


2. Advent Calendars teach children about taking turns. Most advent calendars have one thing in each box you open. If you have more than one child, they will have to take turns or learn how to share what's inside. This year, we have a Lego advent calendar, so the boys have been taking turns each day with who gets to put together the little model. Yes, there have been days where there has been fighting over it, but they're still learning. They are only two and three, so a little fighting is kind of expected. But my three year old keeps track really well of whose turn it is and explains to his brother, "Today is my turn to build, but tomorrow will be yours."


3. Advent Calendars are a great way to get the family together at least once per day. In my house, the boys have to wait until Daddy gets home to open the box for the day. Although advent calendar activities are really short, it is still something that brings the family all together for at least a few minutes each day while we open the box and see what's inside. Then we usually end up staying together a little longer to talk about it or other things and spend a little time together.


4. Advent Calendars help you keep your sanity. As Christmas gets closer, children get more excited, and more impatient, about Christmas. Instead of my kids asking me every five minutes, "How many more days until Christmas?" they already know. Because we look at the advent calendar every day, they can see how many boxes we've opened and how many we have left. Instead, my kid wakes up every day and says, "Mommy, there's only 7 more days until Christmas!" which is a much more pleasant thing to hear than constant whining about, "Is it Christmas yet?"

So, those are just a few benefits that I've noticed from doing advent calendars with my kids. 

The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids Special: Mrs. Claus Doesn't Climb Telephone Poles

Mrs. Claus Doesn't Climb Telephone Poles by Debbie Dadey and Marci Thornton Jones is part of The Bailey School Kids series. It is not included in the numbering of the regular series, and since I have not read any of the other books in the series, I can't really say how it compares to the rest of the books in the series. The story does mention two characters from a previous book, so it may help to read that one first, but it wasn't vital in understanding what was going on in the book.

The book centers on the before Christmas adventures of four friends who are out of school for the rest of the year due to a terrible blizzard that caused their school to be shut down. The story is told in third person but is told from the point of view of Liza, one of the four friends.

It's a week before Christmas Eve, and the friends are trying to decide what to do with their new freedom. Liza notices a lady all dressed in red at the top of a telephone pole doing repairs. Right from the start, she thinks there's something different and special about her. Her friends just brush her off and decide to go sledding instead.

Throughout the book, the kids continue to cross paths with the lady, whose name is Joy. Liza hears her laugh, "Ho, ho, ho." They overhear her talking to a man named Eli, who they saw in that other story, about S.C. and how he doesn't appreciate anything that she does. Eli begs her to come back, and talks about how they're behind schedule.

Pretty soon, Liza is convinced that the lady is Mrs. Claus, but her friends are going to take some convincing, especially Eddie who only wants to race at everything, especially down the big hill that terrifies Liza.

The children get to know Joy better and find out that she and her husband aren't really on speaking terms. Liza is convinced that if they don't help her get back with her husband, that Christmas will be ruined.

This was a fun, quick read, geared toward young readers, with its obvious clues as to who this mysterious woman up the telephone pole might be. I think it would be fun to read to my kids when they get a little older and see if they pick up on all the clues.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

The first book of December was The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. I have read this one before, but it's been awhile, so in the spirit of Christmas, and seeing lots of people talking about reading it on facebook, I decided to give it a reread.

This story focuses on the Herdmans, a family of five children whose mother works all the time and are left to do whatever they want, which is usually getting up to no good. The book starts out by introducing us to these children and some of the terrible things they have done including burning down a toolshed, stealing, hitting, lying, and making fun of anyone they please.

Told in first person by a girl who is the same age as Imogene Herdman, the reader gets an outside view of the Herdmans. After introducing the Herdmans, the Christmas Pageant is introduced. The lady who normally runs the pageant has an accident and winds up in the hospital. No one else volunteers to do the pageant, and the narrator's mother ends up in charge.

The usual director tries to direct it from her bed by calling the new director and explaining every little thing. The mother gets fed up with her calling and declares that the Christmas pageant is going to be "the best Christmas pageant ever" just to show her how capable she is.

The Sunday before the first rehearsal for the pageant, all five of the Herdmans show up to church, because the narrator's brother, Charlie, told one of them that they had refreshments at Sunday School. When they hear about the pageant, Imogene Herdman seems interested, and they all show up to the first rehearsal.

The Herdmans have threatened anyone who tries to volunteer for one of the main parts at the first rehearsal. No one dares to go against the Herdmans, so they end up with all of them, with Imogene herself as Mary.

The narrator tells us about the antics of the Herdmans as the rehearsals for the pageant go on, and her friend is bound and determined to get her role of Mary back for herself. Everyone wonders if five children who have never set foot in the church in their lives before this can actually pull of the Christmas pageant or if they'll completely ruin it.

It's not a super exciting story. The narrator isn't clever or witty, but there are a few moments where she starts to think a little more about the Christmas story and what actually might have happened when Christ was born because of things that the Herdmans do or say throughout the story. There's a sweet, although somewhat anticlimactic ending with the pageant itself and a few closing thoughts from the narrator.

It's worth the read as it did offer some points to ponder and showed that sometimes it might be better to do things a little differently from what people may be used to.

Follow-up on NaNoWriMo

Now that November is over, I am happy to say that I successfully finished NaNoWriMo! I wrote 50,000 words in one month!

I know the original widget doesn't say I made it to 50,000 words or level 100; there's some sort of glitch. Probably because I made it to 50,000 words at 11:30 on the night of the last day, and then the contest was over before the widget could update or something. As proof that I finished, here's a new one. This one didn't evolve, but it has the right numbers on it.

I couldn't have done it without my oldest son. The one who's obsessed with Pokemon. My tactic worked quite nicely. Throughout the month, he kept asking to see what level my Pokemon was and if it had evolved yet. When he would see it, he would say, "Mommy, write some more words, so you can level up your Eevee." And then he would go play something with his brothers so I could get a little bit of typing time in. 

He actually got so excited about it that he wanted to write his own story to get his own Pokemon leveled up too. Unfortunately, the widget only works with the official NaNo website, and you have to be 13 to sign up for an account. 

However, I did help him set a goal the way they do in the Young Writer's Program for NaNo. We set the goal of writing 100 words for the month of November. I thought this would be a challenge for him since his longest story previously written was only two sentences.

He finished in two days.

After that, he kept saying, "You still have more words to write Mommy? I'm done. I already won."

Talk about motivation. As it got closer to the end of November, I knew he was going to be disappointed in me if I didn't finish. This just made me want to try harder. I ended up writing over 11,000 words the last day in my efforts to win, and it paid off! I finished with just half an hour to spare. It feels great to be able to accomplish something like that. But it feels even better to do it with people you love and to help each other get there.

I suppose that's why they always tell people to have a buddy for goals you set like losing weight or exercising. I think the same is true of anything you want to accomplish. If you have someone who can be your cheerleader or motivator, it's easier to find that motivation to do it, even when it seems hard. But it's even better when you have someone who will commit to doing things with you, where you can both help each other reach your goal.