Christmas Crate: Pair the Skillmatics Advent Calendar with other cozy activities for kids!

December is one of the most exciting months of the year for kids as they celebrate the countdown to Christmas with presents, sweets, and celebrations everywhere they look! One of the most thrilling aspects of the season is counting the days until Christmas morning (for those who celebrate), and you can add to the anticipation with the Skillmatics Advent Calendar. Follow this creative and easy gift guide to include the Advent Calendar in a box of festive fun that will help you and your child celebrate all month long while creating new family traditions and memories.

Much like a “Boo Basket,” a “Christmas Crate” is a gift basket full of little treats and activities to keep your child learning while they get excited for the festivities. For your Christmas Crate, find a creative container, like a cute wooden box to hold your child’s festive items and keep your space clutter free. To make things more sustainable, have your child decorate an old shoe box by painting it with classic Christmas designs like snowflakes, gingerbread cookies, Christmas trees, mittens, Santa Claus, snowmen, and the like. Ask your little one to do this just as a fun activity without telling them about the Christmas Crate, and they’ll be delighted to see their work used later as a gift they receive.

When it comes to filling the Christmas Crate, look no further than our Advent Calendar. With 24 boxes to open each day leading up to Christmas morning, the calendar also comes with a cardboard Christmas tree that your child can add decorations to each day. Hiding in the boxes are stickers for your creative kid to put to use decorating the Christmas tree –– 20 sets, in fact. That leaves four boxes, each of which include a unique, holiday-themed card game! Each Skillmatics Advent Calendar comes with  Merry Matching, a holiday memory game; a Christmas Scavenger Hunt inspired by our popular game Found It!; A Conversational Game, much like our bonding game Train of Thought; and Santa, Rudolph, Elf, Holly, a high-energy sequencing game. In addition to the stickers and card games your kid will find in each box, there is also a daily challenge or activity for them to complete to get in the holiday spirit while also developing important social-emotional and observational skills. Not only does the calendar help your child counting down the days until Christmas, but they have a tree to decorate each day, four different card games to play, and a unique challenge or activity for every day of the calendar –– it’s really a gift that keeps giving!

Besides the Advent Calendar, there are lots of other fun treats and activities to add to your Christmas Crate. Keep things cozy by including some holiday pajamas –– maybe even matching pairs for the whole family –– and some holiday stories in your Christmas Crate! Snuggle up together with and dive into classic Christmas books like The Polar Express, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Dream Snow, and ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, along with new books like The Nutcracker in Harlem, Dasher: How A Brave Little Doe Changed Christmas Forever, and Amazing Peace, a poem by Maya Angelou, all of which you can include in your Christmas Crate to keep your little one reading and learning throughout the holiday season. Part of the fun of reading Christmas books is that you can only bring them out once a year, so you and your little one can start to identify your favorites and look forward to reading them each holiday season.