Thanksgiving Activity Calendar / DIY Advent Calendar

I saw this idea for a Halloween countdown calendar using a muffin tin here and although I was not excited about counting down to Halloween, or eating candy each day leading up to the "Candy Day" I thought it was a clever idea to ration our Halloween candy into a Thanksgiving countdown. But since we have three children and three pieces of Halloween candy would not fit in a cupcake tin I grabbed our bag of Hershey Kisses I had ready for a Christmas project.



I had my three year old put three in each spot of the muffin tin. Three year old's are pretty good at counting to three.



Then when my daughter got home from school I had her part ready for her to do. Using a glue stick I had her glue a number to each square I had cut out.





I wrote out 12 things for the kids to do, one for each day of our count down. Things such as.. Draw hand print turkeys. Bring a freezer meal to a friend. Bake a pumpkin pie. Honestly things we would do anyway, I put onto our cards. We are starting 12 days out from Turkey day because we are planning on being out of town part of this month anyway.



My five year old also cut out the actions and glued them to the back of each paper square.



This is when I thought to myself. Why make this and not use it again? So I decided to make them a bit more sturdy and laminated them with packing tape, because that is what I had on hand.

Now each day starting 12 days out from Turkey day, they get to open a number, do something fun, and eat a chocolate. Kind of like the advent calendars. You could very easily make your own advent calendar the same way. Can't get this project done for Thanksgiving? Aim for December! Merry Christmas!



Don't want to make your own cards, or don't know what to write? Well I just happen to find a link this morning to someone who made some printable ones you can purchase. Here!

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