How did opening Advent Calendars go this morning?

Natebw

My son loved his first Star Wars little spaceship. My daughter was actually disappointed with the Friends Mia mindioll, because she didn't get anything to build. But overall they are soooooooo excited about the advent calender.

cheshirecat

As a sleepy six year old opened (his brothers) advent calendar like a normal set and pulled the tray out and emptied it all on the desk - not good. It took a while to make sure the right packet went in the right bit of the tray.

Once that was fixed they both liked their first days treats (from the 2013 and 2014 SW calendars).

margot

Terrible because FBTB spoiled it with their 6 am Facebook post.
Give people time to open theirs (like Huw does) before spoiling it....

Pitfall69

You guys open yours in the morning? We do ours at night. This year will be my daughter's first Advent Calendar.

Natebw

My kids roll out of bed and sleepily crawl over to the calendar and open it so that they can open and play. It does make it harder to get them to school on time.

binaryeye

Pitfall69 said:

You guys open yours in the morning? We do ours at night.

My son is sometimes just waking up when I leave for work in the morning. This will be his first advent calendar (of any kind) and we'll be doing it after dinner. It will be a good incentive to eat well. ;)

CCC

Pitfall69 said:

You guys open yours in the morning? We do ours at night. This year will be my daughter's first Advent Calendar.

Us too. Open after any homework but before dinner, they have a little time to play with it. If they do it in the morning, they'll be late for school as they'll want to build it and play with it there and then.

rdflego

Doing the calendar at night is much more fun as the evening is winding down time anyway. What better way to chill than a little incentive to do some building and just zone out.

CapnRex101

Or buy two and have one for the morning and one for the evening!

As far as I am aware it is traditional to open them in the morning, at least in the UK. Having said that though it is sensible to open them on the evening, even more so if it contains chocolate as that is not really a 'morning foodstuff.'

Anyway, I am just about to open the Star Wars one. City was pretty good and Friends appears to have been well received so it is going well so far today. I will be interested to see whether the weaker gifts all come on the same days as they often have in previous years.

Legoboy

Pitfall69 said:

You guys open yours in the morning?

Natebw

The thing is, I am an early bird. I get up before 5am, but am really beat in the evening. So I spend some serious quality time with my kids in the morning before school. So we do lots of stuff in the mornings. :)

oldtodd33

Definitely at night as Dad leaves for work at 6:30 AM and you don't want to have to walk to school.

Natebw

I saw someone on another thread sneak a minifig in by "magic". I am totally going to do that!!

TLG

Natebw said:

I saw someone on another thread sneak a minifig in by "magic". I am totally going to do that!!

Great idea, but it might be a challenge to find one that matches with the original gift well, though the kids won't care!

dannyrww

My 5 year old opened day one of the city calendar. She loved the little lego guy inside (extra wig and extra letter). I like the city calendar as it has good little builds and a lot of minifigures to set up a scene with... the star wars ships got old after a while last year.

Pitfall69

I'm sorry @TLG‌, but every time I see your avatar; I think of a dyslexic satanist that doesn't know how to draw a pentagram ;)

brokenapathy23

This is our first advent here. We chose to do it in the evening and probably will so everyone can participate but we will see how that goes. I got the city one for the little dude and got the Star Wars for my husband. The little dude loved the city one with the mini fig as the first one.
I was very impressed that they had extra parts!

Jdslater

That battle droid is abit crap to be fair.

Shib

I can see kids being pleased with it, but they've featured in at least one advent calendar before as I remember, would have preferred something else but Droids can always be useful for spacey MOCs

Natebw

My son was fine with the droid. But this is his first SW calendar.

TLG

Pitfall69 said:

I'm sorry @TLG‌, but every time I see your avatar; I think of a dyslexic satanist that doesn't know how to draw a pentagram ;)

Yeah, I should change it, it is irrelevant, but hey, you have Jar Jar Binks as your avatar!

TarDomo

It went well today and yesterday. Cool AAT yesterday and my favourite army builder figure super battle droid today.

brokenapathy23

Little dude didn't want to wait till tonight again so he already opened day 2. He loved the mailbox and has been p

Poisso3

Both my son and daughter love their calendars.

Jdslater

Liking todays SW gun

TarDomo

@Jdslater Yes. The Republic Anti-Vehicle Cannon was pretty cool.

rdflego

City's snowman was a bit under achieving. Mind you I liked yesterday's surprise frog.

margot

I really liked today's Star Wars.

SuperTramp

^Son loved it too,

im disappointed in the Friends advent. some of them are quite pathetic.

Natebw

I don't know, @SuperTramp‌. My daughter liked the toboggan and went BONKERS for the fawn!!!

RomanticWarrior

My son was pretty happy to get a blaster and helmet for yesterday's clone. I think he was a little put off yesterday that the clone was a lover hot cocoa drinker, not a fighter.

My daughter's favorite so far was definitely the baby deer.

donutboy

My daughter was disgusted that the Clone Trooper was expected to take off his Santa hat. "It goes against the spirit of Christmas" she exclaimed this morning.

TarDomo

Liked the helmet. Clone Trooper´s gonna get into battle soon.

dannyrww

Another mini figure to populate the holiday scene..she looks festive with green overalls and a croissant...I guess I like that the city set makes for a little scene when all is said and done. The girls put her at the pie stand from yesterday.

Natebw

I must say, compared to her brother's SW calendar, the Friends calendar is disappointing for my daughter. A few builds are neat, but too many days of tableware and food. The SW calendar has been consistently fun.

margot

I didn't buy the Friend's calendar this year. I was not able to resist in year's past but I got tired of all of the boring accessories like hairbrushes etc. Glad I didn't get it this year.
The Star Wars Landspeeder was terrific the other day!

Ronyar

I want to share what we decided to do far as the advent calendar this year. Instead of buying the relatively expensive Lego one, we broke up our existing holiday sets and Winter Village into individual days. Every day my daughter opens a little box we have set aside for her and she builds one set or part of one of our Winter Village buildings. It's worked really well so far. She's five and loves building, but also loved the surprise aspect of the advent calendar last year. This way she has MUCH more to build everyday, the holiday sets are getting built, and we'll have a full display by the time we reach Christmas.
I have held out several of the larger buildings to be built on the weekends when we have a little more time, but there are plenty of sets available over the last 3-4 years that can be used to make up your own advent calendar. We are up to the various stands from the WVM right now. This wouldn't work if your kids insist on something new, but since she loves building it is working really well for us.

(Although I may be in trouble. This morning she told me she wants to do this all year. 365 days of breaking up sets and setting them out would be quite the challenge, not to mention it would take away the magic of doing it at Christmas time. At least I know I got her hooked on Lego!)

lordzarak

Cute story! You could always do a daily mystery box full of bricks. Instead of going the expensive route of buying new sets to break down, you could recycle existing parts in new combinations. And instead of building an established set, the object is to be creative and see how the parts provided can be combined.

bobabricks

Only got to open up to the 13th so far on my City calendar (there was no Star Wars left :( but the City is good too). So far from what I've opened has been very cool. I liked the little house window and the clever ways to use the treasure chest. I also just found all the little "lit up" spots that tell you where to put everything on the place mat.

Natebw

Finally we get the Christmas Tree astromech droid!! :)

Ronyar

After 24 days of building, my daughter finished the merry go round this afternoon to complete our home made advent calendar. After having done it once, I would definitely recommend it to anyone with kids who enjoy building. Might be too much to get through if your winter village collection is more complete than ours is.

Natebw

I really like this idea. Maybe this will give me the nudge to embrace the WV....