hey there today I'm sharing with you 10 advent calendar ideas for your teenager
or preteen they need to be probably 12 or 13
ours is 13 so these 10 advent calendar ideas for your teenager will not involve
a lot of gifts they are low maintenance these Advent ideas do not require a lot
of prep they will be easy for you to do most of the things are around your house
except like one of them I want you to order from Amazon at Christmas time we
totally spoil our child but other times during the year we do not spoil but on
Christmas I go all out but with the advent calendar it is so hard for me to
think of things to do and give gifts one thing that makes these Advent ideas easy
is that you do not have to have all of them set up before you even start the
Advent season I got some of these ideas from Lana's Christmas adventure box and
I will link her blog below the main thing that drew me to her Advent ideas
for older children or teens is that you do not have to have 24 of them we are
going to do two during the work week and then one on the weekend and what is so
cute that I took from her is to name the activity Advent ideas that you're gonna
do with your teenager you're gonna name it advent - ure when I saw her advent
calendar ideas last year she spurred on my creativity and I thought of so many
more that I can do or tailor those Advent ideas to my family schedule and
to my teenagers age he was 13 so we tailored some of them down and brought
some of them up so what I have done is I've switched it because I never
remember about Advent until like the second week of December I have switched
it so that we're going we're doing like nine ideas and then the 10th one has
some games to it and all I do is because this is all I had in my house last year
I use brown paper bags and I use a marker and I just number all of them so
I have like nine or ten ten bags underneath our fireplace
I just numbered them like this because I had a magic marker but there are also
printables that you can do you can even do one like I did and just type it out
and read and cut it out and just tape it on I thought the glue might look a
little messy and we have a boy so he doesn't care how the bag is decorated
and I just think it's it also helps them know that this is a minimal advent but
it's all pointing us to Jesus I also need to tell you that you don't have to
follow this order like some of them are the order of the Jesus birth story but
some of them you can tailor to do switch around it's for your flexibility you
will be able to be creative and you will able to be flexible with these ten
Advent ideas for your team for the first admin calendar idea I had the day one on
the outside and then in the inside I had a scripture verse with the Bible verse
John 3:16 for God so loved the world that He sent His only Son all right so
this shirt is don't stop believin and I think you can roll it up and it fits
inside the paper bag and you can barely tape it at the top but it will fit that
you do need to order on Amazon in advance and then his band was also
playing this song in band so I thought it was perfect
but I will tell you in seventh grade he did not want to wear it it was too too
controversial for him to wear it the second Advent idea for your teenager is
about Mary and Joseph either verse that you're gonna put in is Luke 1 33 33 and
that is talking about how the Lord will cover her and she will conceive and she
will be a virgin she will have a virgin birth and then you also have in that
baggie Isaiah 7:14 and that's the verse that is a prophecy that says that he
will be a virgin birth and all that kind of stuff the main point is that God
makes promises and that promises are forever and we make promises in our
family that when we promise something it will happen because it passes down and
the promises are never-ending you from the Lord you are going to use popcorn
and string a needle or thread a needle through the popcorn and
we just did like probably a three-foot long strip of thread and we put it on
our smaller Christmas tree now you could look up the Bible verse and have it
printed on the piece of paper but to me I think we don't use the Bible so often
that I think it's important for our 13 year old to open up the Bible and look
for these Bible verses and then he reads them aloud and he is our only child so
we do get the body language that he doesn't want to do this or the body
language that oh this is boring but he will remember that this is a family
tradition that we are passing down and when he has kids he's going to think
that I'm such a fun grandmother because I'm gonna do these Christmas activities
with his kids and then he'll be grateful for day 3 the verses that you're gonna
have in here are Matthew 2 2 and then Matthew 2 verses 7 through 12 and this
just talks about when God revealed himself to the wise men through a star
and it the star showed them where the baby was going to be born this idea is
kind of a magic trick and you're gonna have a hidden message on a white piece
of paper and I got this from scientific Tuesday's on YouTube you will have a
piece of paper q-tips have some milk you just drench your q-tip in the milk
and you write a secret message on your white paper it does need several hours
to dry I tried to dry it quickly with a hairdryer and that does not help it that
much so you will need to do that in advance and you will turn on the iron
and iron over the back of this secret message if that doesn't work do it over
the front just a little bit and it turns the milk that has dried it turns out a
little bit wet or a little bit brown so that they can see the hidden message or
the revealed message and there's also another idea that I thought of you can
have like corn bread and cut it into shapes of the stars and eat in the dark
in your den with just the Christmas lights Shannon for day four you have an
adventure and that is from Luke 2:8 through 14
there is a lyrics game and there are going to be all types of Christmas lyric
Christmas song lyrics and you can just play it see who knows it that kind of
thing this game did not go over well last year because all of a sudden our 13
year old forgot every Christmas song that he's ever heard and it was not a
good attitude day but it is still a good idea I think in the day 5 bag of your
advent calendar idea for your teenager you are going to put some peppermints or
this new candy that is Twizzlers red on the outside but on the inside it's white
so you've got the sweet and the salty and sour sorry
sour and sweet together which is kind of cooler than just peppermints and that
verse is gonna be isaiah 53:5 that talks about where he was pierced for our
transgressions and that was all in the Old Testament I mean to everything in
the Old Testament points to when Jesus died and in the Old Testament remember
they had to kill an animal they had to pierce an animal and his blood would pay
for their sins for that year but when Jesus came he was the final animal that
we had to kill his blood paid for all the sins past present and future now and
so they can celebrate with some fun Twizzlers and you're gonna read the
legend of the candy cane that I will have linked below for you all of these
little tips and verses are gonna be linked down below for you in the
description box while you're down there leave me a comment and introduce
yourself for day six of the Advent Calendar ideas you're going to use
second Thessalonians 2:15 and that's talking about standing firm on the
promises that we have passed down from generation to generation and so this is
going to be talking about traditions what are your family traditions maybe
you'll start a new tradition this Christmas we have a tradition of
sleeping in the same room on Christmas Eve but a tradition you might want to do
this night is to sleep together in the same room or to sleep in the den with
the Christmas lights on I think that would be a fun sleepover idea that's a
tradition that you're passing down from generation
to generation or just make cookies and deliver them to neighbors or make
something and deliver them to neighbors that might be a tradition your family
wants to pass on but it goes with those verses
second Thessalonians 2:15 another tradition that our 13 year old started a
couple of years ago was that we always watch home alone on the day we decorate
our tree for day seven of the advent calendar ideas for our teen we drive
around and look at lights around the town but we also go by Starbucks or
somewhere and get hot chocolates or some kind of fancy drinks the verse for day
seven is Matthew 5:14 3:16 and that talks about being the light of the world
so you're going to look at the lights around the town and we do say no cell
phones in the car so by day eight of the advent calendar ideas for our teen I had
my act together and every bag was filled and lined up under the mantle day eights
bag is going to have nothing in it because you're going to read galatians
2:10 and that's gonna be empty because you're going to fill it or fill a cart
somewhere for Operation Christmas Child or Angel Tree our angel tree at church
made it so that we would order this online and it was shipped to the person
we didn't have to go shop for it per se but there's something fun about doing
that for day none of our advent calendar ideas our teenager is going to read
Isaiah 64 8 and that talks about the Potter and the clay and so there that
night you're going to make sugar cookies and then decorate them and like I said
in the beginning this one and the shopping for Angel Tree or Operation
Christmas Child those can be moved around towards the beginning or whenever
you need to have them to be done I really like the flexibility of this
advent calendar idea list for dates in you are going to played games and one of
them is a pun which teenagers are so good at and they remember it but each
person is going to print off from my list below you're going to print off the
cards and it's almost like a matching game or a go fish like one of them is
going to say I need to catch up to you and the person who has
ketchup bottle is gonna give you that bottle it's a little more intellectual
than that but that's what came off the top of my head very fun and then another
one for Christmas is would you rather and I will list both of those games
below totally fun I I think and I love playing games and both the guys in my
home do not like playing games but we get through it for the Christmas Advent
season remember to have normal expectations when you have a teenager
going through the Advent season activities we are not expecting big
bright surprised faces we're not expecting joyful attitudes we are just
having traditions and making the most of them and we're taking care of ourselves
we're not in control of their attitude or behavior we can help with it I guess
what I'm saying is our day should not be ruined by maybe I'm not so good attitude
but we are gonna have balanced expectations and we're gonna have a good
time anyway these are good activities and I hope that your teenager gets the
Christmas spirit especially the holy spirit thank you for popping over