Advent / Countdown Calendar

A grid of numbered doors, counting down to something

Twenty-four days by default. December is what most people arrive here for, but the day count runs anywhere from one to sixty, which covers the last fortnight of term, a holiday, a birthday, a deployment, or the wait for a baby.

Each box carries a bold number and, if you want them, a few ruled lines underneath for writing what happens that day. Your own title and subtitle print centred at the top of the sheet.

Up, down, or scattered

An advent calendar traditionally counts up from one. A countdown reads better running the other way, from the biggest number down, because the number on the box is then the number of days left and a five-year-old can read it without help.

Both are here. So is shuffled, which scatters the numbers so the order is not obvious at a glance, and that is the one to print when each door hides something and the hunt is half the point. Shuffles come from a seed. Reproduce the same arrangement, or roll another.

What goes in the boxes

Turn the write-in lines on and each door gets ruled space under its number.

People use them for a chocolate reminder, an activity, a Bible verse, a kind act, a joke, a craft. Turn them off instead and you have a clean grid to decorate however you like, or to stick small paper envelopes onto, which is how you get a calendar with actual things inside it rather than a list of them.

Corner accent dots make each door read as a door rather than as a table cell. Cut marks are off by default and worth switching on if the boxes are being separated rather than kept as a sheet.

Columns are the size control

Two to six. Four by default, and there is no separate box-size setting because there does not need to be one: fewer columns simply means bigger boxes.

Two columns on a twenty-four-day calendar gives twelve tall rows and a lot of writing space. Six gives small boxes and a compact grid that suits a wall display where nobody is writing anything. Pick the column count by how much has to fit inside a door, not by how the grid looks.

In a classroom and at home

End of term is the obvious classroom use. A small reward behind each number, or an activity, or a fact of the day, and a display the room checks every morning without being asked to.

At home it is December, or a trip, or a birthday, or counting down to somebody coming back. Print on card rather than paper if it is going on a wall for a month, let the children colour the doors before day one, and tick one off together each morning.