I just think it is good manners and teaches them respect. Thank you notes to Santa are in some ways more important than other thank you notes because he doesn’t hand you the present to get even a cursory ‘thanks’.

My expectations of the letter have changed over time (as my kids get older they are capable of more of course) – I wrote the first few with their input but now I let them write their own letters and am pleased to say they do it pretty well.

Writing two letters a year isn’t a big ask, especially given how much Santa does for us!, and is much better than just writing one letter all about what you want! Do you have any other relationships in your life where that would work well?

This year we made the thank letters part of our Boxing day – it is a quiet day at home, exploring new things and tidying away wrapping paper, etc so it seems like a good time to write those letters.

But seriously, does no one else do this???

Here are a few activities (additional to those in Santa’s letters) that may entertain your kids while they wait for Santa to arrive on Christmas Eve:

 Santa’s face colouring in page

 Six white boomers colouring in page

 a printable colouring-in book about Santa train (for early readers – they’ll get skills from it)

 a pop up Christmas tree card or mantlepiece decoration

 play games and see what’s happening with Santa’s preparations to fly Downunder

 cook some yummy treats for the family – just to get their ok to leave out for Santa to snack on!

 go and see some Christmas lights or Myer (and other) store windows

 try some new Christmas craft ideas

 tell some Christmas and Santa jokes and fun stories

 set them up on the computer and play some Santa games

 write letters to Santa – even if they’ve sent a list, let them write a friendly letter to Santa for fun (and good manners!)

 teach them some Christmas tongue twisters…

 listen to the story of Kris the Moose (although disappointing that the Boomers are ignored )

 together, read Santa’s letter to the world (it’s about Santa and fun but also has educational and making-them-think elements)

If you have some other good ideas, please share them here as we all need help and creativity for our kids at Christmas!

Keeping distractions (like an actual visit from Santa) out of class time – absolutely sensible and reasonable.

Keeping gifts out because they might have to include a religious message? Santa is not truly part of any religious Christmas. Surely if a child chooses to give a gift with a religious message that is the child’s choice? And the child may give a religious message to friends aside from a gift or Christmas card anyway. I am against religion in state schools (so yah Fort Worth for keeping the two separate) but don’t see that Santa and gifts need to be banned – just ban religious images and stories in the classroom.

Just let the kids have a bit of fun and enjoy the magic of Santa and Christmas – why stop them just because some adults are scared of religious connections causing trouble?

Very glad my kids are allowed to have Santa and Christmas at school – could do without excessive gift giving but that’s another topic altogether! How would you feel if your kids had this stuff banned? How would you have felt as a kid without Santa and cards allowed at school?

Yes, I get that it saves a lot of money and stress to cut down the list of people to buy for – and with a list of 35 or so, I am all for that concept! And kids are often easier to buy for than adults you don’t see very often.

But there are a number of downsides I think:
- adults deserve fun too – who says we grow out of presents?
- it teaches kids to expect a lot, and possibly at the exclusion of adults
- kids get so much it is overwhelming anyway

Why not let the kids watch adults get things for a change?

Or maybe make family gifts instead of for kids or adults – a board game all can play, tickets to the zoo or a movie, a recipe book they can use together, some vegetable seeedlings to start a garden, a beach umbrella, and so on.

What do you think – if presents are being cut back, who should get them? Have youe xperienced this idea of kids only giftss – did it work well?

So I thought we could share some idea – please!

For starters, here are some things I’ve done or seen done in the past…

• colouring book and a packet of pencils
• biscuit sets
• books (try discount shops to make this more affordable)
• laminate or frame something special in the context of the group (for example a photo of the group, artwork they’ve done at kinder or a map they once followed)
• a letter writing set -  despite emails I’ve found kids still lve sending and recieving real letters, and its great for their writing skills!
• sets of cutters for play or cooking – and if you can find alphabet or number or theme cutters, all the better!
• a home made booklet of songs – I do this every year so the kids can recall the words of songs we sang during kinder

Yet many people struggle with writing letters (how do I start, what can I say, etc) so we’ve added a template to our site to make it easier.

Free to use, our Dear Santa template can be printed off and used to write a well structured letter to Santa, or just use the text and write out your own letter altogether.

By using this template, children can write to Santa and include ore than a list of gifts they want – it teaches them to show interest in others and end a letter gracefully. The template (like Love Santa letters) also encourages children to recognise their achievements and be proud of them.

So, please feel free to use this template and send Santa some beautiful letters this Christmas!

 Imagine posting a letter to Santa and looking down into his workshop below! 

 At least you’d know he got your letter very soon – although reading it may take him a little logner as he gets LOTS of letters every day.

I came across this picture in an email and fell in love with it. It is really a chalk drawing on the footpath – there is no hole in the ground to see Santa, and we all knows Santa lives in the north pole anyway – but I love the thought and the drawing itself is amazing!  

 * I would love to attribute this to the right person but I only know the creator as ‘The Chalk Guy’. If anyone has his name, or a link to his site if he has one, please let me know.

This year, my in laws are due to host it (it swaps between two houses usually) but for health reasons they are less able to do so. So we were going to host it but we have some space issues (plus quite a few things on our plate) and my partner suggested we hire the local hall instead.

I’m torn between the two options and would love to hear other people’s opinions please…

Home

• convenient & can’t forget anything
• need to do lots of tidying etc
• places for babies to sleep (especially mine!)

Hall

• have to pay to hire it
• have to pack stuff (cutlery, tablecloths, decorations, etc)
• lots of space (indoors and out) & parking
• multiple toilets
• will have to clean everything up that night – including taking rubbish with us
• no dishwasher

Either way, I’ll have to do lots of cooking and kids will need supervision outside.

Has anybody hosted Christmas but in another venue? How did it go?

Some easy ways to save energy of the summer holiday period are:

- Use curtains to keep out the sun and a fan to move the air rather than turning on an air conditioner or evaporative cooler
- Serve directly onto plates instead of serving platters so there are fewer dishes to wash
- Have a container ready for plates to be scraped into rather than rinsing them
- Consider dry flower or fruit arrangements instead of filling large vases with water for fresh flowers
- Use wine glass charms or another method to distinguish glasses so people can use the same one instead of washing glasses all day

And it doesn’t have to stop there! You can use alternative wrappings for presents instead of using so much paper, perhaps a nice tea towel, table cloth, hanky or scarf. You could even give some water saving gifts such as a tap timer or an efficient shower head. We have a few more ideas listed in our article on saving water at Christmas, too.

Christmas is only 12 weeks away, so now is the time to sit down and plan out your Christmas and make it practical and environment friendly.

So the November winner is Precious Water for the funny and sweet story of his daughter ‘s fear when he was being Santa.

And the December winner is Donna-Marie for her reminiscences about European-style Christmases as a child in Australia.

Congratulations to both of you and we hope the special little children in your life delight you with many smiles