Attribution: Photo Fjarde Advent from the collection of  Steffe

For communities celebrating Christmas the first of December is the time to start counting down to Christmas day, either to contain excitement or to raise it according to your perspective. Schools have always harnessed them for learning through making or using. They are a useful  supporting activity  for counting and ordering, for the passing of time and to reinforce  aspects of a  great festival.

Where once we constructed them with card and pictures cut from last years Christmas cards, now we have the Internet and the opportunity to use it’s power and a whole range of multimedia techniques to provide content for calendars than can be seen by the world.

And of course the calendars are not only for children, they have been  harnessed by a variety of establishment to share the arts with adults.

So below is a selection of calendars I found last year, some available for this year.

Woodland’s Junior School in Kent has a global audience for their annual calendar which provides Christmas activities, information, web search and teaching ideas making it a focus for the month.

Their KS1 offering is bold and bright with repeatable colouring and games that children can use at home as well as at school.

Porchester Junior School are all set to start their Advent Calendar on December 1st with it’s links to a new Christmas web site every day.

Nrich have a mathematical calendar every year, this year 2009 has a picture puzzler every day.  Previous calendars can be found here

The Kidszone Finland advent calendar is a  “delightfully illustrated, 24 part story about sharing the gift of happiness with others.”

The Kidzone Finland site, designed  to for  children to find out about Finland, tells us that “Over 24 days the free calendar follows the hilarious exploits of the little elf  Zac, taking readers on a journey through one of the funniest Christmas stories from the home of Santa Claus.”

HelpKidzLearn  advent calendar is  a mixture of  simple, bold,  online  and printable activities for younger children.

Boowa & Kwala an Early Years site  have an advent calendar made up of  24 stockings on a line …not to be opened before December 1st.

How could I have missed the CBeebies Advent Calendar or the CBBC  Countdown to  Christmas?

Children from  Coteford Junior School, Middlesex chose their favourite works for the Tate Kids Advent Calendar ’so for 24 days you can see their choice and what it meant to them’

For the older audience

Showcasing  young people’s  creative use of media for 10 years now is the  Electric December advent calender.   This year there  are links to all of the  presentations, interesting to  watch.  

Music soothes the savage breast, so if it’s the end of a day with a lively bunch of children go to the BBC Bach Christmas Calendar

For further rest and relaxation after a busy day take a look at la previous  calendar from The Tate, already completely open,  strong people will be able to restrict themselves to one picture per day.

From the museums Liverpool has a calendar for this year, but it’s not yet open so can’t tell more.

Saltaire Villagers,  a world heritage site,  have used their homes to create an advent calendar here  2006 and 2007 can be seen. Their decorated windows are lit up every evening until  Christmas  Eve.

For added awe and wonder try the Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009

And finally for  itouch and iphone users there are quite a selection of downloadable Apps called ‘Advent Calendars’ offering pictures, sayings, music and recipes. Prices vary from free to 5.00+. However the Porchester Junior website is optimised for viewing on mobiles so perhaps I’ll use that.

If you know of any other examples or have one of your own please add it to this as a comment.