Full tutorial on how to make the easiest DIY paper cup advent calendar ever, which you can fill with your choice of activities and/or sweets!
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, so I enlisted my 19 month and 3 year old to help me make their own DIY paper cup advent calendar in time for the weekend. Yes, it’s THAT easy to make (and thank you to Red Ted Art for the awesome paper cup idea)!
To make a DIY paper cup advent calendar, you will need:
- 24 paper cups
- 60+ self-adhesive glitter snowflakes in varying shapes, sizes and colours
- 24+ mini pegs, or paper clips
- 24 mini bulldog clips
- 5-6 metres of ribbon
- push pins
- a printer and thin card to print onto
- scissors
COST: a few quid
AGE: 18months plus (though please closely supervise under 3s in case they try to eat the snowflakes!)
TIME: 20-30 minutes
How-to make a DIY paper cup advent calendar:
- Stick the snowflakes onto the paper cups (Chops is very into stickers at the moment, so LOVED helping with this part). We were quite casual with the placement – if the snowflake was very large, we might just put that one on a cup on its own, or if they were smaller, we might use 2 or 3…
- Number your advent cups (we used these gorgeous free printable numbers from Modern Moments, but you could just as easily handwrite them if you prefer). Use mini pegs or paper clips to attach your numbers (this way you can turn them around each time you open a cup and make it easier to keep track of what day it is).
- Pin some ribbon lengths to the wall where you want your advent calendar and attach the cups with bulldog clips. I put ours up in order, but you could place them more randomly and allow the kids to find each on the correct day.
- Print out some numbered notes to put inside your cups (we used these funky ones from wissenswuerze) and choose what activities you want to do on which days (you can always swap them for different ones later on if you want to). Write your activity notes and place them inside the cups for the kids to take out each day.
- That’s it. Seriously, ANYONE can do this craft, right?
If you’re struggling for activities to include in your DIY paper cup advent calendar, don’t worry – I’ve got 30 advent calendar activities here.
Thanks for featuring my numbers. . . this is such a cute activity!
My pleasure Jessica – they were JUST what I was looking for 🙂
So I’ve stolen quite a few of these for our reuseable calendar – at first the youngest had a strop at lack of chocolate (they have a choc one each though, and occasionally they get a sweet!) – and they have been loving the notes with activities much more than I anticipated!
Glad to hear it Claire!
Ours have chocolate calendars from Nanna too. Though they are initially more excited by the chocolate (Chops especially), the pleasure from the ‘cup calendar’ treat lasts far longer and I hope will be more memorable… 😉
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such a cute idea for an advent calendar.
Thanks Susen!
What a cute idea. Advent calendars are so great to teach number recognition too 🙂
#pintorials
Absolutely – you are so right Catherine! 🙂
This is a great way to get the kids involved in making an advent calender, my daughter would love this! x
Do let me know if you make one Jennifer Grace!
I love this! How cute!! I might need to make one myself 😀
Thanks Anna! x
I love this idea Hodge Podge. Butty’s is planning to reward its most loyal customers with a treat from the advent cup! Thank you.
What a great idea! Does Butty’s sell hot choc with mini marshmallows and candy cane stirrers too..? 😉
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