In the lead up to Christmas, young children are very excited and often need more activities, attention and distraction – while parents needs kids busy so they can get things done!
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 check they’re 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!
Those are very nice ideas. Here in the United States, the most my family has ever done was bake christmas and Santa themed cookies a few nights before christmas. We’d always leave a couple out for Santa on Christmas Eve with a big glass of milk. Of course now we know the truth of where the cookies and milk went, but for the time, it was a nice and fun thing to do. Something I will probably do with my own children someday.
Hi Smokey.
In Australia we also leave out snacks for Santa but there is more variation – it’s not just biscuits and milk.
Doing lots of Christmas related fun helps build the anticipation for the kids and I’ve read recently how important that is for modern kids who get so much instantly. And it’s just plain old FUN! Hope you get to enjoy all of this with your kids when you’re ready!
Hey those are some great ideas you have to distract the kids so u can get your stuff done! Frankly I just drug them with sugar and they pass out! Haha just kidding but you know what i mean 🙂
hahaha, yes I think most parents know exactly what you mean and the temptation to bribe or drug probably comes to us all 🙂
I love the suggestions you have made for activities to do with the kids. This is quite an extensive list. Next Christmas, I will need to try some of these. I do activities with the kids starting about a month or so before and extending after Christmas day.
I hope they help (and we’re working on expanding our ideas before this Christmas, too!) and would love to hear how you go with them.
I bet your kids love having a month of CHristmas activities with you!
I hope they have it this coming year, too, because my kids really loved it. I am thinking there is a similar website for Halloween.
This list will still be here in December, Anna, but we will find some more ideas and activities for you, too 🙂
Halloween is not so big here but I’m sure there are plenty of ideas online somewhere…
I love the pop up Christmas Tree card nd so does my son. I think they should make a whole Christmas pop up book for young ones.
WIll you try making that pop up card with your son this Christmas, babydollw?
I have seen many pop up CHristmas books around – I remember having one as a kid myself. try a good shop and you’re bound to find one, or you can get An Aussie Night Before Christmas pop up and other Christmas pop up books online.
Kids want to be involved in the Christmas activities, and my suggestion would be to let them help you in the kitchen. You can bake cookies, and let kids decorate, or cut out with a decorative Christmas cookie cutter. One game that kids love to play, and will allow the parent to work on other things, is playing the Twister game. As an added bonus, it works off some of that pent-up energy.
Completely agree with getting kids into the kitchen to hep with cooking, either specific cooking for fun or actually helping with cooking you have to do anyway. Just last night, my 2 year old helped me spread out some dough – she saw how I did it and copied me exactly without being told so she really did help while learning a skill and having fun.
Sending kids off to a game can be useful, if the kids are the right age for it (Twister is too complicated for my 2 and 3 year olds to play alone!)
The kitchen and dinner table is where we have our family time, wether it’s a holiday or not. At Christmas time it’s just more special, cookies to bake, those brick fruit cakes, goodie baskets to make up for gifts. I just love it.
That’s obvious pocs 🙂 And a pleasure to read about, too.