I had a reader reach out to me this week about not being able to find a LEGO advent calendar for her kids. She was hoping I could resurrect one of my older posts with advent calendar mini builds.
It was one of those posts where I lost the images and PDFs during The Great Backup Debacle of 2018. Tracking them down has been a bear. I’m not sure I’ll find them all but I am trying! Hope that counts for something.
Where are all the LEGO Advent calendars?
You guys ask such great questions on this blog. 😉
This has been an insane sales year for LEGO, with tons more people buying up crazy amounts of our favorite little bricks… to include the advent calendars. So much so, it’s making them scarce.
Now this isn’t a new occurrence. LEGO does a good job of marketing these advent calendars. In general, they are gone within the first week of December.
This year however most of those calendars were scarce in early November. People had difficulty locating calendars in their local stores, whether that be Walmart, Target, Costco or a LEGO flagship store.
LEGO has just become super popular in the midst of COVID. It’s an excellent hobby to break the boredom of stay-at-home routines, so it’s fairly understandable.
Alternative Advent Calendar Mini Builds
So as I mentioned, I’m working on updating that advent builds post which uses a LEGO Classic box… However, it’s a lot to gather together. And there are a ton of images and PDF files that are missing… or simply no longer exist.
Fortunately, if you too are looking for alternatives to the advent calendar mini builds, I may have a solution you. For those of you, like this momma, who aren’t able to get your hands on one of the calendars, you can check out the following list of 4 alternative advent calendar mini builds created by other LEGO-loving bloggers below:
Brick Monster Advent Calendar
I’ve written about Brick Monster on this blog before, so you shouldn’t be surprised to see him again. This time, Charles is releasing advent calendar mini builds on his Instagram. They’re not all there yet, so you’ll have to follow them day by day to see what the new build is.
These may use more specialized parts, but you can check out the advent calendar mini builds created by Charles Pritchett of Brick Monster on his Instagram.
Little Bins For Little Hands LEGO Advent Calendar 2020
Little Bins For Little Hands is always great to check out for LEGO ideas. So I’m not surprised that she created her own LEGO advent calendar for her boys. There are tons of great ideas for the builds on her blog post!
Check out the Little Bins For Little Hands LEGO Advent Calendar 2020 post.
Southern Savers DIY LEGO Advent Calendar Printable
Southern Savers took a different direction on their calendar. Instead of pulling the bricks for all the individual mini builds, they created a scratch off poster, which tells you what to build on each day. This is a great idea for those parents who feel like they might be limiting their kids imagination by providing them specific bricks with instructions.
It also encourages kids to build with what they have, which is a great thing, too.
Check out the Southern Savers DIY LEGO Advent Calendar Printable post.
Savor the Days – Make Your Own LEGO Advent Calendar
Finally, while not a traditional 24 day mini builds calendar, Savor the Days has created a calendar using a smaller LEGO set. They basically broke out the set into 24 building sessions and placed them in an advent calendar box.
It’s a great idea and definitely worth checking out if you don’t have a ton of LEGO brick to pull from. You can see the Make Your Own LEGO Advent Calendar post at Savor the Days.