Festive Word-A-Day Advent Calendar

This word-a-day advent calendar is a great DIY alternative (or addition!) to more traditional advent calendars and includes several activity options.

Use our free printable to fashion your own word-a-day advent calendar featuring festive vocabulary in brain boosting activities, adaptable to a wide variety of ages so it's fun for the whole family.

Word-A-Day Advent Calendar

It's so easy to put this advent calendar together, even at the very last minute!

What you need:

• Printable
• Scissors
• Jar, small box, or reusable advent calendar that has drawers or pockets, or something like we used for our poem-a-day advent calendar

Pick Your Advent Calendar Option

There are several ways to use the printable to create your word-a-day calendar. I recommend reading through the options carefully before printing out the printable so you don't inadvertently see the answers to the word puzzles.

NOTE: Option 1 uses scrambled words. Options 2-4 use unscrambled words

MORE: Fun and Unique Advent Calendars for Kids

Option 1

Option one is a scrambled word advent calendar. Every day you'll draw a word (no peeking!) and work to unscrambled the letters of a Christmas-themed word.

For example, FEL, would unscramble to ELF. If your kids can tolerate competition, make it a race. If they can't, consider making two separate calendars so one child doesn't get upset!

Option 2

After drawing the word of the day (no peeking!), family members use the letters within that word to find as many different words as they can. Decide ahead of time if you want to apply a constraint like only words with 4 or more letters.

For example, if the word is GINGERBREAD, you might find ring, bring, read, brad, gage, etc.

Option 3

This variation uses the unscrambled words and is great for very young children. Every day a different family member selects a word (I said, no peeking!!) and without showing it to the other family members, tries to get them to guess what the word is. They can do this in several ways such as:

• Charades style
• Drawing, à la Pictionary style
• Giving word clues. For example, if the word is ICICLE, you might give the clue, "long, frozen water."

Giving clues may seem too easy, but it is an excellent activity for young children. Being both the clue-giver and the guesser are good exercises to help develop comprehension skills.

MORE: Printable Brain Teaser Advent Calendar

Option 4

The final option will provide a lot of laughter throughout the day! It includes 24 Christmas themed words. (The unscrambled versions of the same words for option 1.)

Upon drawing a word (again, no peeking!), announce the word as the "word of the day." All family members must attempt to use this word of the day in as many natural sentences during the day as possible.

For example. If the word is RED HAT someone might say, "It's time to go to school, and since it's not cold I don't have to wear my red hat, today." (natural) They can't say, "We are having red hat stew for dinner tonight." (not natural)

If desired, keep score, and have one family member be the arbitrator of what is a natural sentence.

MORE: Sibling Kindness Advent Calendar

Put It Together

Once you've decided on an option, print out the word-a-day advent calendar printable. The printable is one page of instructions and four pages of words.

Cut out the individual words and place them in a jar or small box. If desired, you can fold each word in half.

That's it!