Interactive Classroom Advent Calendar: Counting down to Christmas with your students - Update 2025
Lucie Renard —
I'm a huge Christmas fan, so naturally I'll buy the first advent calendar I see to help me count down to my favorite holiday. It makes the last month of the year fly by, and it's so much fun to treat yourself with a gift every single day of the Christmas season in December.
Why not do the same for students? Start every school day in December with a fun Christmas game or interactive classroom activity! We created a free digital BookWidgets advent calendar for students, packed with daily Christmas activities that make learning in December festive and exciting.
What's inside?
The calendar I created is actually a Hotspot Image widget, with hidden hotspots for every school day in December up until December 19th (winter break in most countries). Every hidden hotspot contains one interactive Christmas activity, totaling to 15 fun BookWidgets exercises.
The activities in this calendar are mainly targeted to primary school students (although I love doing the Christmas activities myself as well!). Activities include:
- Help Santa find his clothes - Hotspot image widget
- Guess the Christmas associations - Snowman widget
- Christmas Crossword widget - Crossword widget
- Christmas Wordsearch widget - Wordsearch widget
- Write a letter to Santa - Worksheet widget
- The Snowman Movie - Video Quiz
- Interview a Christmas Character - Worksheet widget
- Watch a short animated Christmas spirit movie - Video Quiz
- Write a Christmas Story - Randomness widget
- Get Santa's friend out of the maze - Whiteboard widget
- Find the 10 differences - Spot The Difference widget
- Decorate the Christmas tree - Whiteboard widget
- Complete the Christmas puzzle - Jigsaw Puzzle widget
- Christmas Memory Widget - Memory Widget
- Help Santa find Rudolph - WebQuest widget
How to use the calendar?
- Share this link with your students, or let them scan the QR-code for the digital advent calender below with the BookWidgets app or any other QR code scanner app.
- Check the date, starting from the first school day in December: Monday.
- Students click on the number of the date. A fun Christmas activity will open.
- Students make the Christmas activity.
- Go back to the Digital Advent Calendar: Click on the black arrow in the upper left corner.
- Repeat for the next day!
How to make changes & create your own Advent calendar
Create a free BookWidgets account, and duplicate the widget you want to change. You can find all the widgets in this public widget group folder.
!Important!
You have to duplicate all the widgets before making changes. Click on the three dots ⠇next to the pencil icon and select ‘Duplicate’.
Addendum: A Dutch BookWidgets Advent Calendar
For all Dutch-speaking teachers, there is also a Dutch BookWidgets Advent Calendar. Go to this group if you want to create your own interactive Christmas activities and customize a digital Advent calendar for your classroom.
Wrap up
Do you have any fun ideas we can add to our advent calendar? We'd love to hear them! Share them in our Facebook Teacher Community or mention us on BlueSky or Instagram.
And me? I’m Lucie from BookWidgets. I’m happy to connect with you personally on X or LinkedIn.
