When is an Advent Calendar not an Advent Calendar?

My kids have never been the demanding type at Christmas. They don't have big long lists of presents they want and have always been patient for Christmas day to open any presents. The same goes for advent calendars...They've always understood that it is only one door at a time that you open on each day.

But when you're off school feeling unwell and you receive an advent calendar that is SO good that you want to open it all at once - you know its more than just a regular advent calendar!

Miss T received the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar to review and hasn't stopped smiling since! As today is the 4th December, she was able to open doors 1, 2, 3 and 4 all in one day and she loved it so much that she begged to keep going. Mean old mummy said no though to save the rest of the magic for the days ahead.

She is THE biggest Star Wars fan as we wrote about here and here. Having brought up two boys who weren't particularly into Star Wars, it always puzzles us how and why Miss T loves it SO much that we've all ended up being Star Wars fans now. Whilst the LEGO advent calendars are available at good toy retailers in 3 themes...LEGO City, LEGO Friends and LEGO Star Wars - this really was the best one for Miss T to receive.

When it comes to LEGO, that IS something that the whole family has been into for many many years. We have boxes full of LEGO that used to belong to daddy when he was younger and that collection has been added to over the years as the kids have received LEGO sets for Christmases and birthdays over the years. LEGO is simply timeless and I'm sure the pieces that we have will be passed to our children's children and beyond.

Let's first take a peek inside the LEGO Star Wars advent calendar and then look and how this advent calendar is no ordinary advent calendar...

Inside each door you'll find the instructions printed as a simple illustration to follow to put each item together. There is a small bag with the pieces you need to make each small LEGO model. Miss T was able to put the mini figure one together all by herself (see photos above) and we worked together on the others (mainly because she's better at LEGO than I am!)

We noticed that in some of the sets there are a few pieces spare (unless I've gone majorly wrong in putting it together). This seems to be the norm to get a few spares whenever we buy LEGO as sometimes those important pieces can go missing.

Once sets 1-4 were put together to bring us up to date on today's date of 4th December, she was entertained for ages playing with them. Two hours later she was still making up her imaginative play stories.

And all that before you even get to the special twist that these advent calendars have...

With these LEGO advent calendars, LEGO aims to save around 1 million plastic trays from going to landfill because the tray inside these calendars is made from 100% Forest Stewardship Council certified paper and is recyclable along with the outer box.

We've always known that playing with LEGO offers endless opportunities and now the box can become part of that too! The cardboard inner tray can be used for crafts or even gardening by using them as seed trays.

You can find out more in this fun video by LEGO here. And here's a sneak preview photo of just some of the possibilities:

this image courtesy of LEGO

And being such a huge Star Wars fan I'm sure you can guess by now what Miss T decided to make...

Disclosure: Many thanks to LEGO for sending us this advent calendar for review. All opinions remain our own honest opinions.