tiny presents for advent calendars

schmink

Hi everyone,

I have bought an advent calendar which is a wooden and has little doors for you to place presents inside but I am struggling to come up with ideas of what to buy!! The space is about the size of a match box and so far I have bought chocolate coins, lottery scratch cards, a face mask and a mini bag od Haribo sweets.

If any of you have any great ideas I would be very very happy to hear them! I'm sure I'm not the only one who is struggling with this!!

Thanks very much for your help xx

ladyfalco

mini chocolate santas/snowmen,?

Mumolulu

I love this site:

http://www.mummymartinstoybox.co.uk/

Lady that runs it is very helpful. I've used her for the last 2 years for tiny advent pressies. I had a problem one year with something on the site that I can't remember now, but I emailed her to let her know and she gave me a discount code as a thanks!

Items come quite quickly, and the selection is great and very brill prices.

You could also search ebay for party bag fillers/tiny toys etc..? You also could (if little one is old enough?) put messages in, instead of pressies, for them to read as to where their advent pressie is hidden like a little treasure hunt if you are struggling to find things small enough? I have previously bought 2 of those wooden calendars, but once my 2nd child came along, I struggled to fit 2 bits in, so did get rid. I'm elfing this year instead

globalds

maybe for a Saturday or Sunday you could leave a tiny message with instructions on how to track down a hidden treasure .....Never tried it ..my kids are happy with chocolate

lexuslass

I had the same problem with some little wooden train advents I got for my little ones last year - didn't want to put choccies in everyday.

Went into Hawkins Bazaar today and was so impressed - they have some fabulous things from 25p upwards. I got loads of little bits and pieces - 12 things for each of my three children so can do half the calendar with those and the other half with choccies/sweets.

some of the things I got are too big to fit into the drawers but I had planned to do as globalds mentioned and leave little clues for them to go and find them.

If you don't have one near you, delivery is only £1.

look in the christmas section and then stocking fillers:

http://www.hawkin.com/

HTH!

sarah*a

You don't say what age group it's for or if its a girl or boy but some things we used for DD's advent calendar were badges, stickers, earrings, stick on tattoos - all just the right size to fit in the tiny pockets on hers.

I found it really hard to fill the last couple of years so am quite glad I don't have to anymore

Mikki

What ages are your children? What about sometimes putting in a little note for an activity to do?

We do this, and have things like make paperchains, make cards, paper snowflakes, cookies etc. Sometimes if it's a busy day it will be something like watch a Christmas movie (complete with popcorn & hot choc!), or an outing such as going into town to see the Christmas lights. Sometimes it will be things they'd be doing anyway, such as decorate the tree, or write & post their letter to Santa!

We also have a "magic" bag (a Christmassy one with reindeers on it!) and sometimes the note will say "look in the magic bag" - I use this for little presents such as Christmas chocolate, those little Christmas lego sets for a few pounds, or sometimes print off activity & colouring sheets and make a Christmas activity book. It's easy to come up with a few ideas that don't cost much, and also don't add to the clutter too much, with a few little surprises thrown in as well!

My kids favourite activity from last year was making gingerbread houses. However, I'm rubbish at baking and didn't even want to attempt an edible one that would inevitably collapse, so what we did was cover empty boxes with brown paper, made a roof and then decorated it with lots of Christmassy stickers, red & green pipecleaners, white pompoms, white paint and lots of glitter! We had lots of fun doing this and they looked great!

Ideas for little presents if you want to add things behind the doors: small lego set, beads and over a few days you have enough to make a bracelet, hair bobbles or clasps, jigsaw spread over a few days, shiny pebbles or stones, shells, lipbalm or lipstick or nail polish for older girls, small car, those gogos plastic collectibles, trading cards, small card game...?????

I shall need to sort out my list of things for this year!

HTH!

themull1

Older kids, little crystals like amethyst, rose quartz etc, keyrings, those flannels that are shrunk and you can rehydrate in water.

monkeysallsayboo

my daughter is 2.5 and so far i have made some little finger puppets from felt, got a small wind up toy (like the very popular ones in the 80s), whistle lollipop, choc snowmen/santas, choc lolly, sugar mouse, pair of socks, raisins, small pack on ink stamps, 4 in a pack, so one or two for stocking and the others for the advent calendar.

i also thought about putting somethings on the floor near it, or behind/under it, so the drawer is empty, but she cant read the clues. so we will have a quick hunt! for larger items, like paper chains, dvd, magazine

hth

monkeysallsayboo

also try www.tickseed.co.uk they are good!

kippers

We put 'clues' in our advent calendar (little bits of paper with a clue written on it in each day). When they were smaller we would put a clue to where to find the 'chest of gold' (a box full of chocolate coins) and they would search for it and take a coin when they found it. Now they are a bit older we put riddles etc in the calender which they need to solve before having a chocolate.

My DD's have alway loved this as it's always been an exciting game leading up to christmas