Easy homemade Advent Calendar to make with kids

It might seem early, but it won't be long until Christmas is upon us! Today I'm sharing how Harry and I made a really simple homemade Advent Calendar. This is a really good project to do with children, as they can do a lot of it themselves, and it's a great way to make a start on the Christmas crafting.

The template for the Advent calendar is made using Microsoft Word or similar. Firstly set up the page so that the margins are much smaller than usual, then use the drawing tool to make 24 rectangles in various sizes. Try and leave a reasonable gap between the boxes. Then print out two copies - I printed out one copy onto white paper and one onto green paper. The white piece is the background, so it needs to be strengthened by glueing it onto a sheet of thick card. The green piece will be the front.

Then you need to collect together some Christmas images. I mainly used my collection of cuttings from old Christmas cards, which I also use for gift tags. The cardboard meant that they made the Advent calendar a bit sturdier. You could also look for pictures on Christmas wrapping paper, Christmas catalogues and gift guides from shops, magazines with Christmas articles or just use Google images to search for Christmas pictures which you can print out.

Cut the pictures to the sizes of the different rectangles and stick them down on top. Try and let them overlap the sides of the boxes a little.

While they are drying, use a craft knife to cut out the windows on the top (green) sheet of paper. Make sure that you have both pieces of paper the same way up, and cut along the top, bottom and right hand side of each box.

Then glue the top piece of paper down onto the background. Only use a minimal amount of glue, you don't want the windows to end up glued down! Make sure that the windows are lined up with the pictures underneath.

When it's all dry, you can use felt pens to write on the numbers for the doors, and bling it up with some glitter glue and sequins. Harry loved helping with this bit, your child can really get involved with personalising their own Advent calendar. And it will still be a surprise when they open a door each day as they'll never remember all the pictures that they used!

If you have a wooden Advent calendar with boxes, don't forget to have a look at my post with ideas for gifts to fill a wooden Advent calendar!