Count Down 8 Special Nights with a Hanukkah Surprise Calendar

As Hanukkah approaches I like to get my family excited by making holiday-themed crafts together. We all love a good countdown so we came up with a Hanukkah surprise calendar. The calendar is fun, easy to make and a great activity that you can do with your kids. Best of all, it’s customizable and reusable. Win, win!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Bristol board (we used blue but the colour is up to you)
• scissors
• painter’s tape
• paint (we used Crayola washable paint – because, kids are messy!)
• 8 envelopes
• glue
• stickers or cut out shapes to decorate
• black sharpie
• 8 surprises to fill your envelopes

1. Cut out a shape from the Bristol Board — we chose a dreidel but a Jewish star would be fun. Use your imagination!
2. Using the painter’s tape, tape off numbers 1 to 8 on each of the envelopes. Don’t worry about being perfect, they will look great no matter what. 
3. Now the fun part: Have your kids paint over the tape and the envelope. This is a fun way for them to explore their creativity with brushes, sponges, their fingers or anything else you can think of —  we even used a dryer ball to make dots.
4. Once the paint is completely dry, slowly peel off the tape and you should have white numbers showing. Use the black sharpie to outline the numbers so they stand out. 
5. Glue the 8 envelopes onto your board.
6. Add any stickers, glitter or decorations — we used gold circles cut out from glitter paper.
7. Best part alert: Stuff each envelope with a special surprise to be revealed on each night of Hanukkah!

Here are some fun ideas for the surprises:

• Hanukkah gelt
• coupons for activities to do together as a family
• small books or games
• homemade finger puppets
• a mitzvah (good deed) that you can do together