If you meant to do one for Thanksgiving and time slipped away from you, you could always make the whole thing green, add a little holly and make it a Christmas wreath. I'm totally saving this to remember that when Rowin was four, he was thankful for dinosaurs, lions, our vegetable garden, and Rayna's blue eyes. :)
Anyway, on to Christmas! I most likely won't post much this month, so I thought I would just share a few of our Christmas traditions that we've started as a family. Some are traditions from when my husband and I were little, some we came up with on our own, and some I stole from other creative moms.
Advent Calendar
I spent a good amount of time making this a couple years ago, but now I can just pull it out every year and it's ready to go! I numbered little envelopes 1-24 and printed off several different Christmas activities. Some of them include: Bake Christmas cookies, Read the Christmas story from Luke,
Write a letter to Santa, Make a handmade ornament, Sing Christmas carols, etc. I got a lot from Life Your Way-you can click through to this link to print some of hers: Printable Advent Activities
I also have some little burlap bags mixed in too-on those days, the kids find a tiny little gift inside (candy, trinkets, etc.).
It's nice because all of the activities are things I would try to do with them anyway, but the calendar spreads them all out, makes sure we get them all in, and gives the kids something to look forward to every day.
Christmas Books
I stole this from someone last year and Rowin loves it! I wrapped several Christmas books-ideally we'd have 24, but we don't have that many yet-I think I wrapped about 17!? So, starting December 1st, the kids pick out a a book, unwrap it, and we read it together.
Elf on the Shelf
I don't think this needs any explaining-we're one of the thousands of families who do this, but it is pretty fun! We don't talk much about the whole "Your elf is watching you and reporting back to Santa." It's just fun watching Rowin search the house for Kevin every day. I also overheard Ro having a conversation with him, telling him how much he likes dinosaurs. :)
So those are just a few of ours. I love hearing other family's traditions! It's nice because our kids are still so young that we can add new things every year and turn them into traditions. However you celebrate with your family, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!
We do the book idea too!! Love it!! I learned last year to use the library - we only had around 12 books, so I went to both our church library and local library and checked out all the other ones we needed :) Worked out great!!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea, Viki! I will definitely be doing that-we have about 5 books left!
DeleteSo fun! We have done the book one in the past too. A new tradition I started two years ago was to take one of the little people nativity pieces and place it in a special box on the dinner table. After dinner I would ask the boys to guess which piece from the Christmas story was in the box and we would talk about why they are important in the story. It's brought up great conversations and silly giggles. So fun!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing! I love that idea!
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