Mini Muffin Tin Advent Calendars

A little while back I made these with 7 kids aged; 23 months, 4, 5, 9, 11 and 12 years old. Obviously working with the 2 youngest was fairly labour intensive but the others were fairly self sufficient.
Before I sat down with the kids I gathered a complete set of supplies and tools and pre-cut the magnets and base papers. I assigned each child a set of 6 numbers (so we covered them all from 1-24). I also covered the magnets in double sided tape and provided each child with their own strip of foam tape squares. I restricted the colours to green, red, white/cream and black so that the magnets would co-ordinate. The hardest parts surrounded the fact that we had more people than scissors and corner rounders.
If I did it again I would;

1. Talk to the bigger kids about contrasting colours.
2. Get them to gather all supplies for each magnet first and lay them out to they can consider spacing and balance.
3. Have a few more premade examples for them to look at.

Supplies; Magnetic sheets plain or self adhesive, 24 cup (or 2 x 12 cup) mini muffin pan, double sided tape, a selection of co-ordinating plain and patterned papers, a selection of number stickers (or you could use stamps), Christmas themed embellishments, buttons, bling and brads etc, foam tape, glue and/or glue dots.

Tools; Ruler, scissors, craft knife, pen, corner rounder, shape punches (various we used heart, star, circles and scalloped circles).

Other; List of numbers from 1-24, cross each number off as you complete the magnets.

Instructions;

1. Measure muffin cup width to ascertain size for magnet squares.
2. Cut magnetic sheets into 24 squares as per measurement in step 1. Nb you could also cut circles if you had a suitable punch or machine die.
3. If using plain magnetic sheet apply doubled sided tape ensuring you go to edges on two opposing sides.
4. Cut squares of plan and patterned paper slightly larger than your magnets.
5. Apply to magnet with double sided tape.
6. Turn over and trim excess paper from edges of magnet.
7. Round corners with corner rounder.
8. Select numbers and embelishments and lay out on magnet. Consider mounting numbers and/or embellishments on punched paper shapes.
9. Use appropriate adhesive to apply embellisments to magnets. (cross off numbers as you go so you don't double up).
   
10. Decide how you will display your advent tin(s). Now is the time to add any ribbon an if need be drill holes in your tin if you plan to hang it.
    
11. Add the contents to you muffin cups (see below).
    
12. Put magnets on muffin tins, you can place them in order or mix them up for a bit of fun.
13. Display!
    

These magnets were made by Brody, Alyssa, Hunter and Alex...

And these by Kieran, Merenia, Will and myself...

In the end we turned ours around mixed up the numbers and strung them up with a ribbon.

Of course we filled them with lollies first...

We added two lollies for each of the kids in our house but you could have a bunch of fun holiday activities printed on strips of paper for your family to do each day (stories, baking, decorating, card writing, visit to Santa etc), or a fortune, a compiment, pieces of an appropriate puzzle, non food treats like pre-inked stamps or some stickers, tiny christmas decorations, or a bible verse if you are that way inclined. Or you could mount some circle punched family photos in each so once you have taken the magnets off you have a funky family picture frame.
♥