DIY Advent Calendar with Free Printable Acts of Kindness Calendar

This DIY Advent Calendar had so much inspiration from many different places, so I’ll try to give credit where credit is due! I wanted something inexpensive, fun, and that incorporated acts of kindness.

Now that my kids are a little older, I have been trying to talk about how we can help others. They have enjoyed shipping presents overseas to children and giving to those less fortunate, so I am really using this holiday season as a platform for those discussions and including it in our countdown to Christmas!

I love muffin tin advent calendars because they use items that can be found at home, and the mini tins are perfect for our Lego sets that we incorporate into this DIY advent calendar.

To Make Your DIY Advent Calendar

If you don’t have a mini 24 count muffin tin, you can do this on a larger scale with 2 muffin tins. I was inspired by the lego advent calendar by Frugal Fun for Boys. So much fun! I wanted to add Acts of Kindness as well, check out how we did that and use the printable below as a guide.

What you need:

muffin tins
post-it notes/card stock with double sided tape
Christmas stickers (gift labels)
small toys/candies (we like to use Legos)

What to do:

Fill each space with one chocolate and a couple small Legos. (I found an inexpensive Lego set and sorted them into the order that it is assembled according to the directons and placed 1-2 pieces in each space accordingly, definitely the hardest part of the project).

On post-it notes, write acts of kindness on the back. (You can use colored card stock and stickers with double sided tape, but I find that the post-its are actually easier to use, though not quite as cute.)

Number the notes and attach with the kindness acts to the outside of the muffin tins to create little doors.

Each day of Advent, open up one door, add to the lego building that you are creating, and complete the act of kindness for the day!

The basic structure of this calendar is 24 doors, each ‘door’ has an act of kindness to complete. Inside the door is the more traditional advent calendar treat, chocolate!

It also contains a couple small Lego pieces that will all come together at the end of the 24 days to make a little toy! So many fun components to this calendar, and all of it leading up to Christmas!!

An Acts of Kindness Calendar to Print!

If you want to follow along with our Acts of Kindness for the month of December, grab your printable calendar below!

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FREE PRINTABLE acts of kindness calendar. Counting down to Christmas, perfect to use with an Advent Calendar.

My acts of kindness were inspired by Coffee Cups and Crayons with their GREAT Christmas printable, The Mum in the Mad House, and Sugar Ants.

You can laminate it and check each day off with a dry-erase marker!

If your kids love Legos like mine do, check out these awesome books, which makes a super Christmas gift!

*This post has been updated from it’s original publication in 2014. As you can see we’ve made different variations over the years!

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DIY Advent Calendar with Free Printable Acts of Kindness