This year, some of the children Roy knows were interested in creating an Advent Calendar. Roy has made an advent calendar in the past, but as one child put it ‘I want treats!’ Roy wanted to make an advent calendar which would be simple for the children to make, but also provide the all important treat each day. We were looking through some of my old craft books, when we saw some Christmas crackers made from toilet rolls. Roy thought there were possibilities in this, and after a little planning and a lot of trial and error, we created the cute advent calendar in the picture. So this week, Roy Creates A Treat Filled Advent Calendar For Christmas.
Note: Roy doesn’t have a problem using toilet rolls, but if you do, buy craft rolls instead!
You Will Need:
- 25 toilet rolls
- Sticky Tape (for holding pieces of tissue paper which won’t behave down)
- Tissue Paper. Roy used green for the tree, red for the four trunk pieces and gold for the top piece
- A black or blue marker
- Lots and lots of rubber bands (you will need about 40)
- A roll of craft ribbon
- Treats to fill your tree with!
- Scissors
Method:
- Start by cutting your tissue paper out. You will need to have some long, large pieces which will cover the outside of the rolls. These pieces need to be at least 2 inches longer than your rolls and wide enough to wrap around. You need four red rolls, a gold roll and the remaining 20 rolls will be green. You will also need 25 squares of tissue paper, large enough to cover the ends of the toilet rolls
- Roll the toilet rolls in the tissue paper. You want one end of the roll to have a slight hangover of paper, which you will tuck inside the roll. The other end should have lots of paper overhanging. Twist the paper together and tuck it inside the roll. This blocks off one end of each roll to stop your treat falling out.
- Put a treat inside each roll.
- Now, cover the open ends of the rolls with the squares of tissue paper and use rubber bands to hold them in place.
- Start assembling your tree. Use one of the remaining rubber bands to hold the 4 red rolls together. Use another to hold two green rolls and the gold one together. Stack the remaining rolls between the red ‘trunk’ and the gold ‘star’ and use rubber bands to hold them together in groups of 3 or 4.
- Use the ribbon to tightly bind the tree together. Roy needed his Grandma to help with this. Tie the ribbon tightly at the top of the tree. You can then also use this to hang your tree up.
- Use the marker to write a number, from 1 to 25 on each roll. You can number them sequentially, or randomly – whichever you prefer!
- Now, each day, find the roll with the date on it and break through the tissue paper to get your treat. The last roll will be Christmas Day!