Kids love counting down the days to Christmas, so why not help them count down the days to Easter as well. In fact, you can create an advent calendar for any holiday or even to prepare for your little one's upcoming birthday. What I love about this craft is I don't get asked "How many days until Easter?" I can just point the kids to the advent calendar instead.

• Age Guideline: 3 Years and Up
• Time Required: 30 to 40 minutes

The age and time guidelines listed above are estimates. This Easter Advent Calendar craft can be modified to suit other ages, and may take a little more time if you alter the craft to fit your needs.

Materials Needed:

• Toilet paper or paper towel rolls
• Small candies or trinkets
• Printer
• Tissue paper
• Ribbon
• Permanent market
• Poster board
• Glue

Instructions:

Decide how many days you'd like to count down. You could go with something even like 14 days for 2 weeks, or you can do 12 days like the 12 days of Christmas. It doesn't really matter what you select so long as it makes you and your children excited about the upcoming holiday.

Cut a toilet paper roll in half, or a paper towel roll into thirds or fourths. These small tubes of cardboard are going to hold a small treat. You need one small tube for each day that you plan on counting down. So if you decided to countdown 10 days, then you need 10 small cardboard tubes.

Place a small piece of candy, or a tiny trinket inside each cardboard tube. Pieces of gum, Hershey Kisses, little kaleidoscopes, a few Skittles, stickers, or fake tattoos are perfect.

Look up a few Bible verses that match the Easter message. 1 John 2:25, John 3:16, and Luke 24: 6-7 are all good choices. Write one verse out on a tiny strip of printer paper for each cardboard tube. I like to use my printer and print my verses out. It is much quicker than writing the verses out by hand. Place the strip of paper inside the tube along with the candy or small trinket.

Wrap the cardboard tube up with a piece of tissue paper. This will keep the paper and trinket from falling out. It will also keep your children from discovering what is inside until the date it is meant to be opened.

Tie the ends of the tissue paper with a small piece of ribbon. They should look like Tootsie Rolls (which is another small treat that can be placed inside the cardboard tubes).

Use a permanent market to give each tissue paper covered tube a number. Each number represents how many days are left until Easter. So the kids will be opening up number 14 first, if you planned on your Easter Advent Calendar lasting 2 weeks.

Take a large piece of poster board and arrange the cardboard tubes on it in descending order. The tube with the number 1 on it will be the last one your child opens. Glue the cardboard tubes in place.

Create a heading at the top of your poster board using a permanent marker. You can simply write "Easter Advent Calendar," or add your child's name in front of it like this "Anna's Easter Advent Calendar."

Hang the Easter Advent Calendar up where your child can easily reach it. Each day leading up to Easter, remove one of the cardboard rolls and watch your child enjoy the surprise of finding out what is inside.