ASDAN Advent – 25 days of free festive activities to engage young people

The festive season is in full swing here at ASDAN, and we wanted to spread the cheer by gifting you an advent calendar of daily creative resources to engage your learners this December.

Download our free ASDAN Advent calendar (.zip 19.9 MB)

Our free ASDAN advent calendar contains 25 fun and festive challenges, activity ideas and free resources to develop the six core ASDAN skills:

Ability to learn
Teamwork
Problem solving
IT skills
Literacy
Numeracy

These skills are useful in all aspects of life, learning and work. The calendar includes challenges and activities from the following ASDAN courses:

Certificate of Personal Effectiveness (CoPE) Levels 1 and 2 – a nationally regulated qualification that develops personal and social skills for learners aged 14-16.

Personal Development Programmes (PDP) – accredited programmes that develop core skills through practical challenges for learners aged 13+.

Short Courses – more than 30 topic-based courses that develop skills for learners aged 13+. Including English, PSHE, FoodWise, History and Beliefs and Values.

My Independence – ASDAN’s suite of programmes for learners aged 11-19 with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Lifeskills Challenge – an online bank of challenges for learners working from pre-Entry to Level 3, based around practical activities and skills development.

To aid certain challenges within the calendar, we’ve also included worksheets, PowerPoint presentations and recording templates to support the young person’s individual learning style.

Our five favourite activities from the advent calendar include:

Use Minecraft to construct a build of a famous building
Observe how actors communicate feelings in a TV drama
Visit a place of worship
Read or watch and summarise a Charles Dickens novel
Set up a board game championship

(Parents, teachers, carers and trusted adults – you have our permission to bring out the tinsel and get stuck into these activities too!)

This year ASDAN launched its Instagram, where we share our members’ successes in the classroom, celebrate young people’s achievements, showcase our education experts, offer regular free resources and much more! It’s wonderful to see our Instagram community grow each week.

We will be sharing one image and its related activity every day across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in December to add some sparkle to your scrolling.

Each advent day comes with a festive illustration hand-drawn by our Head Elf (Design and Development Manager) Jemma Davies.

We’d love to see the work learners create during the ASDAN advent, so please share it with us! Tag us or use the hashtag #ASDANAdvent

We hope you have a wonderful, warm festive season and that our advent activities help to spread a little joy.

Download our free ASDAN Advent calendar (.zip 19.9 MB)

Best wishes,

The ASDAN team