I know, I know…it isn’t even December and I have a Christmas craft. Just stay with me for a second. This is a fun DIY advent calendar, so you will want to have this one ready before December starts.
The best thing about this advent calendar is that you get to customize the daily goodies. So if you have a child with diabetes, or food allergies you can insert activities and rewards that are not food related. We did our advent calendar with a combination of activities and free trade chocolates.
For this advent calendar you are going to need a piece of foam board, green poster board, scissors, glue, paint brush, two paper towel rolls, tissue paper, and a marker.
First draw one half of the tree on the poster board. Carefully cut that side out in one piece. Then place that piece on the opposite side to use as a template. Now you know your tree is symmetrical.
Glue your tree to the foam board.
Cut your paper towel rolls in pieces about an inch long. Each paper towel roll should give you about 12 pieces. So two paper towel rolls should work perfectly.
Cut some tissue paper in squares. Allow about 2 inches around the roll.
Now tuck the surrounding tissue paper into the inside of the roll.
In a small bowl mix equal parts water and glue. Use a small paintbrush to coat the inside of the tube. As you can see in the photo above, the inside tissue paper will be very wet. This will allow the tissue paper to adhere to the tube.
Now take your marker and write1-24 on each of the tubes.
While the tubes are drying, get your goodies in order. I wrote down some fun activities my children love to do and cut them into strips.
Put your goodies inside each tube. This is a tube that I tried a different way to wrap and actually had to redo it the way it is written in this tutorial. SO you know this way is the easiest and works the best. 😉
Glue the tubes to your tree. You can glue the tubes while the inside is still wet, so don’t worry about having to wait for this step. Now you have a decorated tree!
When the coordinating day approaches your children can use their fingers to poke through the tissue paper and get their prizes! This way you can also tell if someone is cheating (not that our kids would ever do anything like that).