What did I prepare for advent calendar fillers 2022 – to be continued

🎄 Day 1

📌How: Letters wrap up

🎁Present: Precision Fusion Football (Size 2)

✂️What I used:

• Clean food packaging card without any writing on
• Parcel wrapping paper
• Scissors
• Pen
• Masking tape

📌What I did:

1. I cut up small pieces of cards (from the food packaging) and wrote each letter of the present on the card. So I wrote “football” on 8 pieces of cards.
2. I shuffled the letters so they were not in order.
3. Wrapped up each letter with a piece of wrapping paper. Remember don’t wrap them in order so your little one cannot easily guess the present when they were unwrapping.

I stopped J when he was unwrapping the 4th one and asked him can he guess what the present was with the letters he had so far. He had so much fun putting around the letters and using his phonic skills to try to guess.

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🎄 Day 2

📌How: Moji Maths Challenge

🎁Present: Pick Your Own Quest: Escape from Minecraft

📌What I did:

1. I simply folded the paper up into a small parcel and taped with a small piece of masking tape so it holds its shape. Attach a string to it and glue the other end of the string inside of my 3D advent calendar.

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🎄 Day 3

📌How: English crossword

🎁Present: Labyrinth board game

✂️What I used:

• Rough paper
• Pen

📌What I did:

1. I thought about the letters in the present and see if any clues can fit in.
2. Drafted my crossword layout with pencil and then finalised with pen.

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🎄 Day 4

📌How: DIY scratch card to learn Christmas vocabulary in Chinese

🎁Present: Unicorn top cards game from Twinkl

✂️What I used:

• Clean food packaging card without any writing on
• Acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• Washing up liquid
• Bottle lid (to hold the paint) (You can use anything for the same purpose)
• Clear cellotape / sticky tape
• Pen

📌What I did:

1. Wrote out instructions and grid.
2. Filled in the grid with the Chinese words. I’ve chosen the theme “festival”. I intended to let my son to win the prize so I specifically wrote more of the word “Christmas” than other festivals.
3. Mixed a drop of washing up liquid with some paint.
4. Applied the paint over the words with a paint brush.
5. Once dried I did a few more layers of paint until I could not see the writing anymore.

Note: Depending on the type of paint you have, this activity needs more time to prepare than the others mentioned above (Day 1 to 3). You might need at least two layers of paint in order to cover the writing.

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🎄 Day 5

📌How: DIY decoder

🎁Present:

✂️What I used:

• Plain paper
• Sharp cutter
• Pen

📌What I did:

1. My present was a book, so I looked for a page with all the letters on it.
2. Placed a piece of paper on the page. Traced small rectangles over the letters of choice.
3. I then cut them out using a sharp cutter.

Note:

• Don’t use cards as they are too thick you cannot see the position of the letters.
• Sharp cutter helps to cut small rectangles.
• I did not tell J the orientation of the decoder, I let him to figure it out himself.

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🎄 Day 6

📌How: Treasure Hunt – Rooms in the house in Chinese

🎁Present:

✂️What I used:

• Plain card
• Pen

📌What I did:

1. Cut out enough number of cards to write my sentence. I had 8 characters in my sentence (你的禮物是一本書) so I cut out 8 cards
2. On the back of each card I wrote down the name of the rooms in the house, and placed the card to its corresponding room.
3. I then hid the present on the very last room for J to find it.

Note:

• I used “rooms in the house” as my theme simply because we were learning them in my Chinese homeschooling. You can use other theme that suits you the best.
• I mixed up the order of the sentence and put the word “書”, which is the present, on the last card so J cannot immediately guess the answer.

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🎄 Day 7

📌How: Fishing maze

🎁Present:

✂️What I used:

• The back of an old, large envelope without any writing on
• Pen

📌What I did:

This one was super simple. J was fishing, and only 1 lead to his present, and he needed to find out which fishing string leads to his present by following the lines. What I did was just drew the lines and pictures as shown.

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🎄 Day 8

📌How: Maths questions on a plus sign

🎁Present: Festive Wreath DIY Craft Kit from The Make Arcade

✂️What I used:

• A piece of used parcel wrapping paper without any writing on
• Scissors
• Pen

Aim: Solve the Maths question on each square to reveal a letter. When all Maths questions are solved and all letters are revealed, it should spell out the present.

📌What I did:

1. I cut the wrapping paper into a “+” sign, making sure I had enough space to write my Maths question.
2. I then folded each square inwards as shown in picture.
3. Wrote the Maths questions on the “outside” of the square.
4. I then wrote a letter of the present on the “inside” of the square.

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🎄 Day 9

📌How: Number / alphabet code

🎁Present:

✂️What I used:

• A small piece of rough paper without any writing on
• Pen

Aim: Try to figure out the numbers are actually representing the alphabets, and then spell out the present.

📌What I did:

Super simple! A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on, and my present was a book, so I just simply worked out the numbers and wrote them on the paper.

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🎄 Day 10

📌How: Maze in a foil box!

🎁Present:

✂️What I used:

• An empty foil box
• Pen

Aim: Follow the lines to find the present.

📌What I did:

Another super simple one! I drew the maze in the empty foil box! That was it!

Note: Practice with a pencil first because drawing in a box with limited space is a wee tricky.

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🎄 Day 11

📌How: Number / alphabet code

🎁Present:

✂️What I used:

• A small piece of rough paper without any writing on
• Pen

Aim: Try to figure out the numbers are actually representing the alphabets, and then spell out the present.

📌What I did:

Super simple! A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on, and my present was a book, so I just simply worked out the numbers and wrote them on the paper.

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

🎄 Day 12

📌How: English word search

🎁Present:

✂️What I used:

• A piece of used parcel wrapping paper without any writing on
• Pen

Aim: Answer the questions and cross out the answers on the word search table, which would leave 10 letters. Then to reveal the present, J has to cross out the name of a person in our house.

📌What I did:

Set up was simple. Just a normal word search in Xmas theme. I got some ideas of the questions from Twinkl. Then I added a twist at the end before revealing the present by asking J to cross out the name of a family member.