NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Gemstone Advent Calendar – 2022 Advent Calendar for Kids with 24 Gemstones to Open Each Day, a Complete Rock Collection Christmas Countdown Calendar with Mini Gemstone Dig Kit

The thing is, as i just learned 4 times this season, with kids 3 to 6 years old they want to get right at a gift when they open it. First they have to wait until dec 1 (i did give them november 29 which was the best i could do), then they can only touch part of it until they have to wait. I guess there was the excitement each morning but then they had to wait.
One more thing with the little ones. In one household they were 2 and 3. I did not get the same calendar for each and of course each morning one on them wanted what the other one got.
I did clear the gifts with the parents. I’m the fun aunt with no children so i always do. I think we all learned a couple valuable lessons. I can’t wait until they are old enough to love cash or whatever electronic version of what that will be by then.

Gifted to my 8 year old daughter so she would have a little something each day of december before christmas and was worried that a box of rocks would be disappointing. It was not!! The gemstones were very nice. First 3 days are too large for the necklace or keychain that came with it but are beautiful. She still has 21 left to open but i had peeked by pulling the tray out from the bottom before giving it to her (i have heard stories of off-brand gemstone advents being very disappointing). The tray was nice and sturdy and all the gemstones had remained in their places throughout shipping. Quality was very good. You could definitely get the stones a lot cheaper elsewhere and do your own advent calendar, but as a busy mom, this worked out very well. Going forward i would just try and grab it while it was on sale, and to be fair, it was the same cost as the lego advent i purchased for my son.

The quality and value are impressive. We buy our 3 kids advent calendars every year and this is by far the best i’ve seen. Not just for the items included, but the packaging is amazing! Sturdy, beautiful, very giftable. There’s a guide that names each stone with a description. My 6 yr old loved finding the stone from the list and reading about it. It even includes jewelry you could place your favorite stone in.

Only downside: a pull string carry bag is included but it’s far too small, not even half the stones fit.

Highly satisfied and highly recommend for all ages!

My kid, like most, loves rocks lol. I had been getting him a lego advent calendar every year and he liked it ok but this rock calendar got him excited leading up to christmas! He would open it and tell me about the rock and then take it to school to show his friends. Hopefully next year there is a different one so i can get it again (he’s 9 for reference)

Got this for a 6 year-old girl and she was beyond excited to open up a door every night. There were a variety of rocks with minimal duplications. We loved matching them to the included visual rock variety chart. We loved it so much, i also bought her the ng rock tumbler to create her own ‘gems’

My 4 yr old niece loved this! She loved getting each rock out and really loved the one she had to “mine” out of the plaster.
Once all the rocks were out, the pouch to put them in was really too small. I wish it would be big enough to carry the rocks and the jewelry accessories.
Other than that it was perfect!

So when my wife bought our four year old son this advent calendar i had my doubts that rocks would do much for him. I was wrong. He loves opening up a new type of rock each day and finding it in the pictures given. The only thing i would complain about is the size of the bag given isn’t big enough to hold all the rocks. As you can see a ziplock bag is being used instead. Sometimes the pictures are a bit off on the color of the rocks but that’s probably just because there is a range in color. Anyway, great advent calendar for a little boy!

My 10 year old absolutely loved this! The older he gets, the harder it is to buy presents for him that don’t break the bank but this was a hit!! Even my 7 year old daughter was curious and wanted her own lol def worth it! The bag that comes with it doesn’t fit all the rocks but he displayed his favorites on his dresser and has the rest tucked away so he doesn’t lose them.

We got this for son as his 2022 advent calendar. All the ricks are decent sized. In fact most wont fit in the jewelry settings it comes with. He had fun identifying the rocks each day.

Purchased for a tween who loves rocks etc. Great variety and it came with pictures and facts that were helpful. Only downside was the necklace cage was too small to hold any of them except for one.

This advent calendar has been a hit so far for our almost 13 year old boy.

He’s looking forward to opening the jewelry piece so he can make a necklace from one of the stones.

The price was great.

This is gemstones.

They are polished so you don’t have to waste months polishing them yourself in a tumbler.

Comes with a bag with a brush tool, and on the last day, you can dig out your last gemstone that’s encased in kid-friendly material.

You open the box like a book. It has a bit of velcro holding the flap down.

There is a list of the 24 gemstones on the left inside of the flap of the box.

Then there are 24 numbered boxes on the right side.

The first day you can open two (the box that says ‘open first’ is a bag and tool for later use).

As you open each day, starting at day 1, you get a gemstone and can compare it to tge list of the left side to identify it. Most are easy to identify, since they are different patterns and colors.

My kid only got stuck on day 3 because there were 3 green to choose from but dad came to the rescue.

To the people who complained they didn’t know they had to dig out the last rock… It says so right on the back of the box, using a large picture to show you. (see my attached photos). It’s part of the fun. Kids like it even if you think it’s lame.

There are fake kits on amazon. This is not a fake kit. Make sure you order from this page, where it actually sats national geographic as the seller and on the box. If your box kit doesn’t say national geographic, it’s a knock off. (the square logo is not enough to proce authenticity, it beeds to have the name too)

if you’re looking for fossils and stuff, this is not the right kit. There is a kit for rocks and fossils specifically.

This one is gemstones. It’s awesome.

Edit: i do wish there was an ‘answer’ sheet included that listed all the genstones and the day they are opened. Some of them are tricky to identify until others are opened days later and ruled out through process of elimination.

If you’ve ever ordered an advent calendar online you’ve probably encountered the shifting of contents. This calendar was no different for me. I always make time before the advent countdown starts to carefully open the calendar, and put a present in each compartment.

The walls between compartments on this calendar are skinny, which meant trying to glue the insert back into place wasn’t going to work, and i found that several of the doors were damaged in the process of me taking the insert in and out. I used a bit of paper and tape and covered the gaps where kids might peek and ruin their surprise. There were stones for each compartment i just had to put 4 back into their own private chambers.

I instructed the kids not to shake it around, and to keep it laying flat so nothing moves around in the box over the next few weeks and we haven’t had any issues. The stones inside are lovely, and some are so large the kids were amazed. I do think it’s a great product, there just needs to be a better containment so that either the rocks don’t shift around, or that you can fix it without as much difficulty.

My biggest peeve with this calendar is that it doesn’t tell you what is in each compartment. For instance, when you get a lego advent calendar there is a diagram on the back of the punch out that tells you how to put it together. Here, there is nothing. It would be nice if they told you what the specimen was instead of leaving you to try and guess from the inside cover. The specimens are hardly comparable to the picture perfect examples on the card provided.

I’ve really been enjoying this so far but i just opened day 14 and it was empty ):

will update if any other slots are empty but i don’t want to ruin the surprise.

My only other complaint is that sometimes there’s been big rocks in small pockets and small rocks in big ones – it’s really hard to get big rocks out of the small slots without ripping the cardboard around it, i wish they’d keep the bigger rocks in the slots big enough that it’s easy to pull them out.

My 3 year old rock loving son loved this calendar! It had a great selection of stones in it and he was thrilled! However, for the money – it would be nice if the doors wouldn’t fall apart after a few days. After a few doors were open the other ones started popping open and it was just hard to keep the others closed.

I bought this for the students in my classroom as we do a rock and mineral unit during the holidays. One student gets to open it for the current day. Only draw back was some rocks seemed to overlap into two possible categories. Seller said they could help us identify any unknowns which was awesome just not convenient.

My kids loved the gems, there were some repeats in gem type but good sized rocks. Was confused why jewelry hardware and keychain hardware were included as all the gems were too large for these hardware. Kids were disappointed, they kept waiting for a small rock to make a keychain but they were all too large.

This is a fun variation to the usual toy or chocolate adventure calendar! The first two days were lovely polished rocks but the next 5 days were shell fossils. Maybe each calendar is sorted differently but my kid was bummed out to get yet.another.fossil. Anyway we still have 17 days left to open so i am staying optimistic! Comes with a pouch to hold your goodies, along with a magnifying glass. The flap of the calendar also identifies the different rocks in the pack so kids learn a little too.

The kids loved opening the rocks each day and reading about them, however, there are so many similar rocks that it quickly became a guessing and re-guessing game. Some items were not included (but on the list) and additional rocks with no description. But the are pretty cool. The kids loved taking out the microscope and looking at all the details.

We were surprised when we started finding duplicates after a few days, and it all built up to the 24th day in which we’ve got a fake rock that was wrapped in plastic stamped with a g on the bottom. It’s some sort of chalk??? Anyway turns out you need to break that open to find the last rock (no where does it tell you this). So it was pretty good right up until that ending part, which was at first underwealming then just a little thrilling. Pretty good but could use better instructions if you are supposed to know to break that last thing.