The classroom advent calendar: 25 doors, 13 school days
Mrs Edgar · From the Classroom
A classroom advent calendar is one of the few December activities that pays you back. It gives the last three weeks of term a shape, it buys you a settled five minutes every single morning, and the children police it far more reliably than they police the reading roster.
There is just one thing worth sorting out before you put it on the wall — and it is not the craft. It is the calendar itself.
Start here
25 doors, 13 school days
Every shop-bought advent calendar is built for a house, not a classroom.
A home advent calendar runs 1 to 24 or 25 because a family is together every one of those days. A class is not. In 2026, December starts on a Tuesday and most Australian schools finish on Thursday 17 December — which gives you thirteen school days, weekends and the holidays taking the other twelve.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
Filled = a school day in 2026. Dashed = a day your class is not there.
If you open one door a day from 1 December you will reach the last day of term somewhere around door thirteen, with half the calendar unopened and twenty-eight children who can count. Pick one of these before you start and the problem disappears.
Start it in November
the tidy fixTwenty-five school days counted back from 17 December lands on Friday 13 November. Number the doors 1 to 25 as a countdown to the end of term rather than to Christmas Day, and every door gets opened. This is the version to choose if you want the full 25.
Run thirteen doors
the honest fixBuild the calendar with only as many doors as you have days. Nobody minds a thirteen-door calendar; everybody notices an unfinished twenty-five-door one.
Double up on Mondays
the compromiseOpen the weekend's doors together first thing Monday. It keeps the real dates and it makes Monday morning the best five minutes of the week, which is not nothing.
Open two a day in the last week
Save the doubling for the final stretch, when the timetable has gone sideways anyway and nobody is starting new content.
Version one
The student-drawn calendar
Costs nothing but paper. Every child is inside it somewhere.
This is the one that turns your calendar into a display and your display into a daily event. It takes one art lesson to build and then runs itself for the rest of term.
How to build it
one art lessonEvery student draws a Christmas picture on a square of paper. Each square is then covered by a numbered square, attached along the top edge only so it lifts like a flap. Display the whole lot in order on a wall, a window or a pinboard.
How to run it
two minutes a dayEach day, choose a student to lift that day's number. Whoever's picture is underneath wins the prize — reward time, first in the line, a treat, choice of the read-aloud. The suspense is entirely genuine, because nobody knows whose drawing is behind which number, including you.
Why it works better than a bought one
The prize is not the mechanism. The reveal is. A child watching their own drawing appear on the wall in front of the class is the actual event, and the lolly is a footnote — which is useful to know on the day you have run out of lollies.
Version two
A task behind every door
For the fortnight when nothing new will stick, but nothing should stop either.
The drawn calendar solves the atmosphere. It does not solve the other December problem: three weeks of a class who have mentally finished, in front of a teacher who has not finished the units. A task-based calendar puts something worth doing behind each door, so the countdown carries the learning instead of competing with it.
What goes behind a door
A quick write. A crack-the-code. A measurement problem dressed as a reindeer. A challenge to find five things in the room shaped like a triangle. Short enough for a morning warm-up, real enough to count.
Rotate who opens it
roll numbersClass list order, roll numbers, or the same random draw as the drawn version. Opening the door is the reward; the task is just what everyone does next.
Read it the night before, not on the spot
The one habit that keeps this running: glance at tomorrow's task when you pack up. Thirty seconds, and it means you are never reading a challenge aloud for the first time in front of the class at 9.05.
The good version
Running both at once
The two versions are not alternatives. Put the students' drawings behind the doors and a task on the back of each numbered flap, and one five-minute routine does both jobs: someone's artwork is revealed, someone wins something, and the class has a task to start on. Reveal, then do.
It also fixes the flattest part of the drawn version, which is the day after a child's picture has already come up. Their drawing is out of the running, but the daily task keeps them in the routine.
Before you start
The four things that go wrong
A child is away on their day
Decide now, not in the moment. Either the prize waits for them, or the class celebrates the drawing and the prize is handed over on their return. Say the rule out loud on day one and it never becomes a negotiation.
Prize creep
Day one is a lolly, day four is a lolly and a sticker, and by day nine you are auctioning your own stationery. Write the prize list before December and stick it inside the planner. Half of them should cost nothing — first in line, choose the read-aloud, sit in the teacher's chair, ten minutes of drawing time.
The wall runs out
measure firstTwenty-five A5 drawings need more wall than you think. A window, a cupboard door, a length of string across the room, or five rows of five — work it out before the paper is cut, not after.
The last week collapses
Assemblies, concerts, class parties, the swimming carnival. Some days there is no five minutes. Give yourself permission to open two doors the next morning rather than dropping the routine — once it stops, it does not restart.
The actual trick
One routine, four steps
Like every classroom routine worth keeping, this one survives on being identical every day. By about day three the class runs it without you saying anything.
Five minutes, every morning, for the three weeks when five settled minutes are hardest to find.
Cut the squares this week, run the art lesson next week, and by the time December arrives the hardest three weeks of the year already have a shape.
Happy counting down.
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