Religious and Acts of Kindness Advent Calendars

November 18, 2023 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

The advent calendar activity ideas I recently shared mostly focused on fun holiday-type things you can do together as a family like looking at lights and drinking hot chocolate, but if you want to bring about a deeper meaning in your advent calendar activities, check out these ideas, which are focused on the religious nature of the Christmas holiday or acts of kindness you can do this season.

At Home with Kids has a list of advent calendar activities and associated Bible verses to talk about with your kids while you do the activities. For example, putting a star on top of the tree is paired with “After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.” (Matthew 2:9)

Not Consumed has a Bible reading advent calendar you can use to help teach children the Christmas story and prepare for the joyful day. Do the reading and share a little treat each day if you like.

The idea of a reverse advent calendar (see this post from Joyfully Thriving if you don’t know what I mean) has become really popular in recent years to get both kids and adults focused on generosity and acts of kindness through the season. If you’re looking for more ideas for acts of kindness you can do with your kids, check out these ideas from The Moms at Odds. Their list includes things like complimenting a stranger, taking a walk and cleaning up trash, or baking cookies to take to the local fire station.

If you want a printable calendar, check out this one from Coffee Cups and Crayons (as I write this it hasn’t been updated for 2023, but the number of days is the same even if the days of the week are wrong). It includes things like donating socks to the homeless shelter or making someone laugh.

Coffee and Carpool has another printable acts of kindness list where the items are numbered but days of the week aren’t listed. Some ideas from this one include painting kindness rocks and having siblings make gifts for each other.

If you’d rather buy an acts of kindness advent calendar you can grab this one, which includes little stories and missions for people to do, or these cute acts of kindness ornaments, which you can use as daily prompts in your advent calendar.

20 STEAM Educational Gift Ideas For Kids

Christmas STEAM Activities for Kids

Have you read?

Books About Bugs Through the Seasons

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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