24 Christmas Countdown Activities for Toddlers

Hey everyone! As I’m sure you all know, Christmas is right around the corner. One of my absolute favorite things to do with my son for the month of December is counting down the days until Christmas. We have a special Christmas countdown decoration that we use for this purpose. Now, most people call this an advent calendar, which is fine, but seeing as how we’re an atheist family, and “advent” has religious connotations, we simply call it a Christmas countdown.

In our family, for our countdown calendar, we do more activity based gifts. As I’m sure every parent can relate, I don’t want to spend money on more cheap little toys that will just end up in the trash, especially when our kiddo gets SO much on Christmas anyway. So, instead of buying “things”, we spend time making memories together each day in December. (Spending time together reading a new book counts as an activity in our family!) In this post, I plan to give different activity based ideas for families with younger kiddos for their advent calendar or Christmas countdown.

Overview:

This is the list of what we have planned this year to do with our son. Activities range from reading a new book to watching a movie, to going on special outings! After I list each day’s fun task, I’ll go into a bit more detail about what each task entails.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own product or craft images.

Christmas Countdown Activities #1-4

1. Open Elmo’s Countdown to Christmas book and watch Elmo’s Christmas Countdown
   • Elmo’s Christmas Countdown has been one of my favorite toddler friendly Christmas movies ever since I watched it with my nephews when they were little. What better way to start our OWN countdown!
   • This year in addition to watching the movie, I bought this cute book to go along with it. The book is a lift-the-flap style book that’s perfect for any young kiddo’s curiosity!
2. Write a letter to Santa
   • Each year I have my kiddo write a letter to Santa. If you don’t do Santa with your kids, that’s fine! This is also a great opportunity to have them write YOU a letter or a list if you haven’t already finished your shopping.
   • This is the template I print each year from the shop CafeLattePrintables on Etsy. I love this printable!
3. Watch Frozen and make coffee filter snowflakes
   • Frozen may not be an actual Christmas movie, but I think it ties in really nicely to winter activities, such as making these coffee filter snowflakes from One Little Project.
4. Everett Holiday Kickoff
   • In a city not too far from ours, there’s going to be a fun holiday event that we’re going to. There’s a winter maker’s market, a touch-a-truck event, “ice princesses” (which since we just will have watched Frozen will be fun), and more. Afterward, we might go to dinner or eat out. I highly recommend checking if there are similar events in your area!

Activities #5-8

5. Visit with Santa and take pictures.
   • Because of the pandemic, my husband actually dresses up as Santa since our son is still so young. This is the suit we purchased last year. I find that these pictures turn out so sweet. Again, totally fine if your family doesn’t do Santa. Maybe you could use this time to visit with family instead.
6. Read The Polar Express and watch the movie
   • The Polar Express is one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies. There are so many great messages that that movie sends. So this year we plan to read the book and watch the movie together.
7. Make Christmas scented playdoh
   • This is a great sensory activity for younger kiddos. I plan to make gingerbread scented play dough as well as sugar cookie scented. This post from Little Learning Club explains how to make different scented play dough.
   • After making the play doh, you can use it with cookie cutters or just let kiddos come up with their own fun way to play!
8. Make a gift and a thank you card for someone special.
   • This is a great way to teach kiddos that gifts don’t always have to come from the store. They can come from the heart and be just as meaningful!

Christmas Countdown Activities #9-12

9. Open and read Peas on Earth
   • Our toddler loves counting right now and this book by Jonny Marx talks about 5 little festive peas getting ready for Christmas. Reading is so important, so we always welcome more books!
10. Wild Lanterns at Woodland Park Zoo
    • Wild Lanterns is a large Christmas light experience at the zoo. They have different displays set up to look like zoo animals. We went last year when our son was 1 but he didn’t quite understand though. We all had fun though so this year, now that he knows more about animals and such, I want to go again.
11. Make gingerbread houses
    • This is something we all have fun doing. Making gingerbread houses is also a great way to express creativity and build something together as a family.. This year we bought ourselves an Oreo kit and we bought little man a Paw Patrol themed kit.
12. Video from Santa
    • Something I did last year that was really special is we purchased a personalized video from Santa. This year I’m using the company Santa’s Club for our personalized video. Santa’s Club has been featured in Forbes, Yahoo, CNN and more. They offer different packages with videos to download or live video chats with a very personal experience asking questions like “What toys did Santa bring last year?” “Favorite TV Show,” etc.

Activities #13-16

13. Online music classes
    • Music class actually makes up a few of the special activities we’ll be doing. During the holiday season, kiddo’s music teacher offers four sessions of a special family favorites from the Music Together collection. For the first class, I plan to surprise our son. He’ll be so excited!
14. Jingle Jam and go to lunch
    • In addition to the online family favorites, our son’s music teacher also offers kiddos to attend her winter Jingle Jam. During this special holiday class, families get to sing their favorite Music Together and holiday songs. I’m super excited because my sister and nephew are actually coming to this with my kiddo and I. Afterwards, we plan to go to lunch, so this is going to be a super fun day!
    • If you don’t have something like this in your area, maybe you could check and see if there are any fun library story-time activities for the holidays or something similar.
15. Music Class and window clings
    • Usually on days when we have music class in December, we’ll combine class with another fun and easy activity. One of those activities is using window clings. After class, little man will get to have free reign of decorating our window with gel Christmas clings. This is a fun, cheap and really easy toddler activity. And most window clings, especially gel ones, are washable and reusable.
16. Color Christmas coloring book pages
    • One of the easiest activities to do with kiddos is color Christmas coloring book pages with them! You can usually find coloring books at Dollar Tree or you can even find free ones to print online.

Christmas Countdown Activities #17-20

17. Open and read Christmas Cookie Day
    • This book is so cute and I’m going to use it as a preview of what’s going to be coming the following days. The book even has a Christmas cookie recipe in it for sugar cookies!
18. Make Christmas cookies and bring some to our neighbors
    • After opening and reading Christmas Cookie Day, we are going to make cookies together! I plan to make traditional sugar cookies as well as a few other kinds. Cookies for DAYS. After all of the cookies are ready, I plan to put them in one of our cookie tins and take them over to our neighbors.
19. Decorate our sugar cookies
    • The last step to our sugar cookies is decorating them! While I may make some fancy ones like I’ve done in the past, I want this more to be a fun activity for our kiddo where HE gets to decorate them. I plan to make royal icing for them and went and bought a big container of assorted holiday sprinkles.
20. Music class and dot sticker Christmas trees
    • These dot sticker trees from Fantastic Fun and Learning look SO easy, cheap, and adorable. This is an activity that I’m sure my son will love!

It’s the Final Countdown! Activities #21-24

21. Make popsicle stick snowman
    • These popsicle stick snowmen from PJs and Paint are so cute and look really easy! There are steps to turn this into a fridge ornament, or if you want to make it into an ornament, you could easily hot glue a ribbon to the back.
22. Music class and make reindeer food
    • On Christmas Eve, one of our favorite traditions is going out and sprinkling reindeer food on the lawn so Santa knows where to go. Last year we purchased it, but this year, we’re planning to make our own a couple days before.
    • Here’s my reindeer food recipe:
      • 2 tbsp cup rolled oats, 2 tbsp pumpkin or sunflower seeds, and 2 tbsp sugar crystals. I bought this mix of red, white and green crystals from amazon!
    • Before we sprinkle the food on the lawn, I plan to read the following poem:
      • “It’s finally Christmas Eve and Santa’s on his way. Let this food lead the reindeer as they guide Santa’s sleigh. The moon will make it sparkle and create a guiding light. It’ll help Santa find you so he can bring you gifts tonight.”
23. Lights of Christmas in Warm Beach and eat dinner out
    • The Lights of Christmas is a drive-thru Christmas light set up. It’s gotten rave reviews and this will be our first time going. But, I absolutely LOVE driving around and looking at Christmas lights. Even if your area doesn’t have a special set up, driving, listening to Christmas music and sipping on hot cocoa or apple cider is one of my favorite activities. It breaks up the hustle and bustle and chaos that the last few days before Christmas can bring.
24. Twas the Night Before Christmas
    • On Christmas Eve, we have several family traditions that we look forward to every year. My favorite tradition that started when I was little is that we always get to open one present: a new pair of pjs. But now I’ve expanded on that tradition. We all get new pjs, a new Christmas book to read, a new ornament for the tree, and a movie to watch before bed. Christmas Eve is for spending time together.
    • Another tradition we started last year is that we order Chinese food on Christmas Eve. With so much going on, it’s so much easier if I don’t have to cook.
    • Lastly, we sprinkle our reindeer food on the lawn, leave out milk and cookies for Santa and we read our new book AND Twas the Night Before Christmas. And like all other parents, as soon as our kid’s in bed, we’re spending hours assembling toys and stockings, haha!

In conclusion:

We love doing our Christmas countdown. I figure, activities and making memories together are so much more special than little trinkets. They’re fun, easy, and relatively cheap for the most part depending which activities you do! It’s something I look forward to doing all month long and I know as our son gets older that he’ll look forward to it too!

What are your favorite Christmastime traditions? Let me know in the comments below! Also, if you liked reading this and want to see more ideas from Growing Up Garlicky, make sure you subscribe or feel free to check out my fun and more page. You can also find other links down below. Thanks everyone for reading! Happy holidays!