Countdown To Christmas In The Classroom

Some of your may have found your way here from my other blog Confessions of a Modern Day Mennonite where I am counting down to Christmas with Blogmas.  If you're a new reader I just wanted to say welcome here!

Today we are talking about ways to count down to Christmas in your classroom!

Only once have I done a countdown for Christmas in my classroom.  It was my first year as a teacher and I was teaching kindergarten on a week to week basis because the regular teacher had lost her voice.  So, my idea was not the most thought out... but I'm going to share it with you anyways!

What I did when I was teaching kindergarten was we made a green and red paper chain (I can't recall if I did this with the students or not but I do recall that we were learning about patterns at the time so it kind of just fit right in with that).  and we hung it up on the bulletin board... not in any fancy full way... we just had it hanging down the side.  Every morning I would call on a different student to come and snip one ring off the chain and every day we watched the chain get smaller and smaller until, on the last day of school, we removed the last one from the board!  It was okay... but I've seen better ideas!

Most of them are things you can buy or make and although I'm no so sure about you I know that I NEVER had time to make anything around this time of year (although, hopefully, if you made it once you could reuse it every year).  For this reason I'm going to show you some that you could reuse every year (or you can just head to the Dollarstore and buy a cheap chocolate one... assuming you have 25 or fewer students (and I really hope you do!)

My other requirement was that they wouldn't take up a lot of space.  Now, I've always been in someone else's room waiting for them to return from their sick leave or maternity leave... so it has always been full of someone else's things.  Maybe if I had a room of my very own it wouldn't be so full.  But I'm just going to assume that space isn't always at a premium in a classroom and therefore these advent calendars can't take up a lot of it (space that is).

Growing up my mom had one that I'm assuming she (or my grandma) made out of felt... similar to this one

Felt Advent Calendar

I'm thinking you (the teacher) could make the tree and the pockets with numbers and every year each student could make the different ornaments to put on it... I would stick them on with pieces of velcro (just like my mom's)... one side of the velcro stays on the tree and the other side goes on the back of each of the ornaments.  Just before the break you can either give students their ornaments back or you can save them for the next year's crew to glean ideas from.

This next idea I got from The Primary Techie

She made her own out of a tool organizer thingy.  Where all those numbers are is a drawer which would hold a surprise for the student that opens it.  I think I would also include some kind of holiday trivia, fun facts, riddles, or problem of some kind (especially if I were teaching middle school)... something for the whole class to be involved in at the beginning of each day.   

The Primary Techie also reads the story "Waiting for Christmas: A Story About The Advent Calendar" which I think even my middle schoolers would have enjoyed.

Want more advent calendar ideas? 

Check out my personal blog for to see the advent calendar I made for myself to count down the days until Christmas.

Do you do anything special in your classroom to count down the days until Christmas?