Advent Calendars of Sorts

In our house we have a few family Advent traditions other than the usual Advent Calendar of which they always get one each. Sometimes they get the chocolate ones (who can forget the year Boykin ate his way through five of them in a week), once they had a Playmobil one, often they have the Santa cloth one's  with pockets (bought in a Poundshop for 50p each in the January sales over 5 years ago) filled with small toys sweets and good wishes. This year however, thanks to the toy sales in Argos and their newly found love for all things Lego, they have a LEGO  Advent Calendar each.

Actually, some of our traditions take the shape of a different kind of Advent calendar. We have an Advent calendar of books, one to be read every day....

...and an Advent calendar of films, one to be watched every day.....

...always ending with It's a Wonderful Life  and Twas the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve.

We also have the Advent Box-of-activities, filled with craft kits, activity books, lapbooks, jigsaws, puzzles and games to be dipped into as and when they feel like it.

These things are all important to my children who have devised many of these traditions and collected many of the books and films for themselves over the years. And our tree reflects this life of constant learning, we have the usual traditional  baubles and seasonal crafts they have done, but we also have momentoes of their projects that are so totally un-Christmas related (spot the tiger from this post anyone?) Some of my favourite decorations come from other Home Educating families from all over the world. We did a swap with other Five in a Row families a couple of years running and they serve as reminders of the fun we had learning with those books as well as knowing that someone else, somewhere else in the world is hanging our home-made decorations on their tree.

Our tree is full of memories and every year it takes just that little bit longer to trim :)

What are your family's Advent traditions? Do you have any longstanding ones or are you just setting out on the journey with your children?

Links to Free Christmas Lapbooks
'Twas the Night Before Christmas
Nativity 
Christmas around the World

My Pinterest boards
Christmas Education - printables, recipes and more
Christmas Crafts