Mathematical Advent Calendar

December is here, which means it's advent calendar time across the country! So, in order to embrace the Christmassy nature of the month I have decided to get my Year 7 class to create their own 'Mathematical Advent Calender'.

I have created a blank advent calendar template that I will hand out to my class and then I'll get them to cut out the 'doors' on the template that I have pre-cut round some of the edges. They will then stick this template sheet onto a blank piece of A4 paper.
After the setting up of the calendar is done the class will be challenged to come up with as many mathematical problems, equations, calculations, sums etc to which the answers are the numbers between 1-25. The answers to their problems will then decide which door is numbered with which of the numbers between 1-25 and therefore what doors get opened on each day of the month, leading up to Christmas.
After the students have then written mathematical problems for each of the doors they will be given the task of filling in the inside of each door with a joke, fact, picture, cartoon, rhyme, etc  that will be revealed on each day when the doors are opened.

I have created an example to show the class where all the mathematical facts are what we have been covering so far in class this year. I will, throughout the lesson, give the students guidance as to what types of mathematical facts they can use to create the answers (numbers 1-25); we have been studying BIDMAS, sequences, expressions, substitution, area, perimeter.

*in the style of Blue Peter*...here's one I prepared earlier...

I have uploaded the template onto my TES resources page, this can be seen here - http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Mathematical-Advent-Calendar-Template-6305408/ I printed out the template sheets and then used a scalpel and cutting mat to cut out the horizontal lines of each door. This means all the students will need to do is cut the vertical line between them (right hand of each door) and then stick the sheet to another piece of A4.
Of course I could have got the students to do this but didn't particularly fancy having to borrow the scalpels from DT and allowing the kids to do this themselves!

Let me know what you think! I'm planning on putting these up on the class display after they've been finished off. My year 7s are the only one of my classes that don't currently have a display up in my room!