Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Box {+Giveaway}

What is the Spurbox Advent Calendar about?

It is a craft box with 12 different activities to complete within 24 days before Christmas. And you know kids are kids. The moment my kids laid hands on the Spurbox, they did 2 activities in one go in an hour! So, you may time the craft sessions with your kids according to your own schedule.

Spurbox Advent

You may have read about our home-made Advent Calendar in the previous post. In a few of the advent activities, I included the kids’ favourite activity, i.e. Art and Craft. I love doing art and craft with them. When the elder kids were having exams, we shelved off all craft activities and life was kind of boring with revision, revision and revision. And now, with the school holidays, is the best time to do craft work together. Especially when the 2 elder kids are still interested enough to not label it as ‘boring’ and the youngest is old enough to do many crafts with minimal supervision.

We received the Spurbox Advent Calendar which comes in time for making our crafts as part of the Advent Calendar activities. Save me the effort to think of craft ideas!

What is the Spurbox Advent Calendar about?

It is a craft box with 12 different activities to complete within 24 days before Christmas. And you know kids are kids. The moment my kids laid hands on the Spurbox, they did 2 activities in one go in an hour! So, you may time the craft sessions with your kids according to your own schedule.

I realize that each pack of activity contains the craft supplies needed but not in entirety. Some common things like scissors, markers, glue are not included but most families with kids should have them ready in the house. I would actually prefer that Spurbox includes ALL the supplies needed just like some other subscription boxes have. However, this is a small thing, we have plenty of common craft supplies and we can live with that.

There is a piece of puzzle that comes with each activity pack. Upon completion of the 12 activities, we are supposed to piece the 12 pieces of puzzles on an A4 sheet with 12 boxes to reveal the picture. We are certainly looking forward to what picture it will be!

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snowman-in-a-cup
Activity – Snowman In A Cup
Christmas Tree Card
Christmas Tree Card

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Perhaps you may like to get one Spurbox Advent Calendar for your child or as a gift.

Each Spurbox is priced at SGD36.90 and if you order 2 or more, the price will be SGD28.

Do check out other activity boxes and more information over here.

Craft and Baking Classes

Apart from Spurbox Advent Calendar Activities, Spurbox holds craft and baking classes too! The holiday classes are held from 3 Dec to 23 Dec and they have regular weekend classes. We tried out 1 craft class and 1 baking class over 2 different days.

Magic Pocky Wand Baking Class

Suitable for 2 and above (young children to be accompanied by parent(s))

Duration: 1.5 hours

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We had really lots of fun baking together and the best part is the recipe is sooooo simple and yet tastes sooooo good that I am going to do it at home during our Christmas Party!

Kids listening to instructions
Kids listening to instructions
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Squeezing dough

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Adding Sprinkles to Pocky Wands
Adding Sprinkles to Pocky Wands
Story Telling time
Story Telling time
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Making a small craft while waiting for Pocky Wands to be baked
Totally Yummy!
Tada! Totally Yummy!

Recipe

100g Condense Milk

4 TBSP Water

256g of Plain Flour

40g Butter

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 150C
  2. Mix condensed milk with water and set aside
  3. Then mix in the flour until it’s well mixed
  4. Add the butter and keep mixing till mixtures resembles cornmeal
  5. Mould into a stick and bake for 15 minutes, then spread melted white chocolate and sprinkle on top! Note that the white chocolate can harden pretty quick and do add the sprinkles as soon as possible

You can get the sprinkles from Phoon Huat, so I was told, and I am going to buy them to sprinkle on cookies and even ice-cream!

Santa Mug Pottery

Suitable for 2 and above (young children to be accompanied by parent(s))

Duration: 3 hours

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This was the first time we did pottery and it was not difficult for Master 4, but not without my supervision. Each of us was given an apron and a piece of clay. The friendly staff guided us step by step with rather simple instructions. Nothing too difficult to handle for kids.

pottery
Moulding the Mug Shape
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Helping Master 4 to cut the pottery
Drying the Pottery Mug
Drying the Pottery Mug
Are they cute?
Are they cute?

More information on Spurbox Holiday Camps and Term Classes:

Spurbox Junior Gourmet classes cater to children age 2 and above. They are currently having chocolate logcakes and gingerbread house classes for the Christmas season. They have also rolled out CNY classes such as custard cookies and tangerine cakes. Each Junior Gourmet class is 90mins and children can also enjoy an interactive and engaging storytelling session, as well as a craft session. All materials are provided and accompanying parent(s) do not need to purchase a ticket. Ticket is usually priced at SGD40 per kid and SGD70 for 2 kids. More information on Spurbox Holiday Camps and term classes, do check out here.

If you really like their classes, they do have a Super Saver Pass promotion where children can attend any 5 classes at only $150, working out to be $30 per class, which I think is fairly reasonable if one or two parents are able to do it with the child FOC.

Giveaway Time!

Spurbox is very generous to sponsor 4 Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Box to 4 lucky winners! I thought this is really kind of them!

Steps to participate:

1) Leave a comment on the facebook post telling me what bonding activities do you do with your kids during the day time (if you are a SAHM) or after working hours (if you are a PTWM or FTWM).

2) Tag 5 friends along with your comment.

3) Sign up to follow my blog via email, please refer to sidebar of blog page. Do remember to tell me in the facebook comments that you have done this step so that I can look out for it.

This is a Flash Giveaway so that winners are in time to craft with their children before Christmas!

Giveaway ends on 12 December 2359 and will be announced on facebook and this post on 13 December.

UPDATE!!

Winners of the giveaway are: Grace Ng, Debra Li, Theresa Tay and Carol Lim! Congrats! I have your email addresses through subscriber list and the organizer shall contact you soon! Happy Crafting!

Further, the organizer is happy to give a 15% discount for individual CNY Craft and Baking classes! Just quote “CHRISTY“!

Happy Crafting and Happy Holidays! Ho! Ho! Ho! 🙂

Disclaimer: We were sponsored the Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Boxes, Santa Mug Pottery and Pocky Wand Classes for the purpose of this review. All opinions are 100% mine. For working mums like me, the Activity Box is a great help for crafting with the kids without cracking my brains on craft ideas and craft supplies. So, I do hope you will find it fun too!

Our Hand-made Advent Calendar with Activities!

I would need to plan according to the dates from 1 Dec to 24 Dec. Advent Calendar begins on 1 Dec for 24 days if you do not already know. An Advent Calendar is a special calendar used to count or celebrate the days in anticipation of Christmas. You may read more about the Advent Calendar over here.

advent calendar

Even though we are not Christians, we love Christmas anyway. Somehow with the cool weather, with Christmas decorations dressing the malls plus the school holiday season put together, the Christmas mood does make me happier than other months. I have seen many pretty Pinterest photos on Christmas ranging from party ideas to activities. One of them is the Advent Calendar. This year, I decided to do a hand-made Advent Calendar with activities.

My first inspiration was really from A Million Little Echoes, a very talented mum blogger who did an Advent Calendar last Christmas, unveiling one activity each for her kids to do. As I am a full-time working mum, I do not have the luxury to bring the kids out every single day to surprise them, and many of the advent activities have to be in the evening when I come home from work. So, I decided to plan evening home activities and impromptu ideas to make each day an interesting one for the kids!

I would need to plan according to the dates from 1 Dec to 24 Dec. Advent Calendar begins on 1 Dec for 24 days if you do not already know. An Advent Calendar is a special calendar used to count or celebrate the days in anticipation of Christmas. You may read more about the Advent Calendar over here.

I started by checking my calendar for special events, and drafted a list of activities that I could input into each day of the 24 days. Some ideas are pretty crazy like.. “Accompanying Ye Ye (Grandpa, my father-in-law) to take a bus home to find Ah Ma (Grandma, my MIL)!” This will be a pleasant surprise and I think it is a great idea to let the kids take an out-of-norm impromptu bus ride to accompany my FIL on his journey home. Did I mention I have the best in-laws in the world? Without my FIL’s help each day to come my house to take care of the kids, I cannot work in peace. I know my kids are in good hands. My MIL is a kind grandma whom my kids are blessed to have. So, giving her a surprise by turning up at her childcare workplace will certainly please her greatly! The kids will certainly be thrilled and for me, I have planned it to be a Friday activity so that I can stay up late with the kids since the next day is a weekend 😃

Some other ideas for activities include movie nights, staycation surprise, a walk along Orchard Road to view Christmas Lightings, Reading Wizard of Oz to my kids, Art and Craft nights, Baking, etc, etc. You can think of your own activities to do with your kids too! It need not be bringing them out if you are busy at work on weekdays. The activities that I plan are mostly taking place at night after work hours.

There are plenty of Advent Calendars out there on Pinterest to find your inspiration. What I did was really a simple one and I got all my supplies from Daiso!

A pack of transparent gift bags
A roll of brown string
A pack of colour paper stickers
A pack of wooden clips
A pack of adhesive fancy ribbons
Small gift cards – I found cute Christmas templates and print them out

I roped in all the kids to help on this very first activity on the Advent Calendar on 1 Dec: To make an Advent Calendar! LOL!

It was easy to task the kids now that the elder 2 are good with their hands and have lots of creative juices. First, they helped me to paste the ribbons on the wooden clips to make the clips look Christmasy and lovely. Even the youngest can do this!

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Then I cut a few templates of stickers meant for writing the dates on them and Missy 11 could follow my templates to duplicate to 24 of them.

Next comes the interesting part of writing the dates on the stickers. For Pinterest worthy, my initial thought was to write the dates big and legible with a nice lettering. But I decided to get the kids to write for me and they came out with their favorite drawings, with one creative snowman representing the number 8, a reindeer with a red nose using the red colour paper sticker, a tiger, butterfly and lots more! As a result, even though these bags with the cute drawings are not as glam and Pinterest showcase worthy, I really much prefer these designs as they truly make the otherwise boring advent calendar so much fun and unique!

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After the bags were prepared, I spent an hour writing the activities for each day on 3 pieces of Christmas cards and slot them into each bag. One card for each of the 3 kiddos. As the youngest needs help in reading, I drew a picture on some of the cards so that he understands.

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The last part of it is to string each bag and hang on the wall!

Each morning, the kids will look forward to opening up that day’s bag and read the messages inside. One thing to note is not to write the date on the message cards so that I can change my activity plans around as and when necessary.

Do you have an Advent Calendar in your home? Perhaps you can try this activity with your kids and have fun everyday till Christmas!