It’s December…it’s that time of year again…!
A collection of Mathematical Advent Calendars.
For Advent calendars, the year doesn’t really matter, but this page will be updated with any new resources.
From a favourite site, where you can find so many excellent resources, Transum has an Advent Calendar. Behind each door, you will find a Christmaths activity, laugh at a cracker joke and solve a mathematical word puzzle.
(See this post for more on Transum.)
White Rose Maths has created Advent Calendars for Primary and Secondary students. Full solutions along with commentary from a White Rose specialist are provided.
Try this Mathsvent Calendar from Phil Bruce. For December 1st put the baubles in size order along the tinsel starting with the smallest at the bottom.
Very usefully, you can find all 24 puzzles listed by topic. These puzzles are great, extensions are given for many of the problems too.
For a collection of starters aimed at KS3 students try this Christmas Maths Advent Starter Calendar from MrCsMaths. This provides a nice mix of activities.
From Matthew Scroggs, Christmas 2025 is coming.
It’s nearly Christmas, and something terrible has happened: after years of gradual wear and tear, Santa’s magic sleigh has fallen apart. You need to help Santa build a new sleigh so that he can deliver presents before Christmas is ruined for everyone.
Matthew Scroggs – Advent 2025
J Calderwood has provided three Advent Calendars – Advanced Higher, Higher and N5 Maths for Scottish Students. A great revision resource which could be adapted for different courses.
From Andy Lutwyche we have his Christmas Advent Calendar which covers lots of different topics in number, algebra, shape & space and data and gets progressively more difficult as you go on.
Also from Andy, try his Advent Calendar – Solving Linear Equations. Students answer the questions (the solutions are 1 to 24) and each answer links to a word; when the words are put in numerical order an entire joke is revealed! And another…for older students, Differentiation Advent Calendar where students are asked to find the gradient of a curve at a given point. Cheesy joke included!
Another from Andy, this “Advent” Calendar is a set of GCSE Higher non-calculator questions. Full answers are provided on a series of slides.
Further revision calendars are included later in this post.
Staying with a calculus theme, I use Dr Tom Bennison’s Integration a day Advent Calendar annually – perfect for year 13 (UK age 17-18).
Nrich publishes annual Advent Calendars – one for Primary (2025) and one for Secondary (2025). Both feature twenty-four problems, designed to tap into students’ mathematical curiosity, one for each day in the run-up to Christmas. To make the best of these resources, Nrich suggest taking a look at their Guidance on nurturing students’ curiosity. A real strength of Nrich – solutions are published which are based on students’ work.
Also from Nrich – try this Advent Sudoku.
From Plus Magazine, see the Plus Advent Calendar 2023; for 2023, Plus revisited some favourite episodes of their Maths on the move podcast. For December 1st, Oli Freke explains how frequency is related to pitch!
“Whether it’s the maths of chocolate, new breakthroughs in pure mathematics, or the mathematical sound of music, we hope you enjoy this selection of Maths on the move episodes!”
Plus Magazine December 2023
Both Nrich and Plus Magazine have published such good collections of Advent resources; clearly, for an Advent Calendar, the year does not matter so we have lots of choices! See for example this whole collection of advent calendars on Nrich; note the different themes available – a Sudoku for each day perhaps? The 2016 Primary Calendar featured tasks to encourage mathematical habits of mind something we need to encourage in students of all ages.
Mathsbox website, and/or Mathsbox on BlueSky.
The Indisputable Santa Mathematical Advent Calendar comes from Dr Hannah Fry and Dr Thomas Oléron Evans who throughout December 2016, to accompany the release of their book on the Mathematics of Christmas, tweeted out Christmathsy bits and pieces, one a day, advent calendar style.
From the brilliant Mathigon site, we have 2023 Puzzle Calendars, puzzles are revealed at 9am GMT every day in December and solutions are available on the following day. And perhaps have a look back at their puzzles from earlier years…
On Teachit Maths, see their Interactive advent calendar. Remember that the free subscription (scroll down for the free option) on this excellent site includes many high-quality pdf resources. Teachit Maths describes the resource as an advent calendar in the form of a presentation focusing mainly on mathematics. Suitable for KS3/4. (KS3/4 is UK age 11-16). For each day you will reveal a festive fact, joke, teaching idea, activity or game.
there is also a calendar for your Science colleagues from Teachit:
Alternatively how about a Christmas Revision Calendar from Access Maths? Three Christmas Calendars are available, one for KS3, and two for GCSE – Foundation and one for Higher.
Alternatively, try this higher GCSE revision quiz, very attractively presented as an Advent calendar, answers are included.
From Mark Dawes try this lovely resource with problem-solving tasks for use in maths lessons in December. Suitable for starter activities, they span a range of abilities in KS3 and KS4. As well as the calendar the resource includes worksheets for some of the problems and a file of Teacher notes. Note Mark’s instructions for the PowerPoint file (on the first slide) which enable you to choose the task you want whichever number is clicked on.
Alex Pett created his advent calendar complete with history and problems for each day. Alex has provided a pdf version or use as a Google document. For an Activeinspire resource, try this version.
Try a video advent calendar from Numberphile! The 24 video links are just below the video.
On Control Alt Achieve, Eric Curts will be wrapped up 2023, by sharing some of his favorite “Cool Tools”…
Eric shared 24 of his favorite “Cool Tools“ from 2023, with one new entry per day from December 1st through 24th (sort of like an EdTech advent calendar).
For 2023, Eric used the theme of artificial intelligence tools and resources.
In Eric’s post, Cool Tools 23, you can see several ways to check out each entry, including an advent-type slideshow.
Another Advent Calendar to check is Mark Anderson’s Appvent, and I am delighted to see that the first entry is Jonathan Halls’s brilliant Form Time Ideas, and remember you can also use Form Time Numeracy.
