Mumsnet Talk

Read on here that someone does the above with their kids so I got wondering what I could do with mine. They are 2.5 and dd will be 5 the week before christmas.

Ideas so far.
Make stars from toilet roll inners & paint.
Make picture of Santa & stick on cotton wool beard.
Mince pies
Put up & decorate tree
Other decorations
Family service at church on Christmas eve
Write cards (they both did pictures at school/nursery which have been printed up)
Wrap presents
Go see Santa at garden centre.
Go to farm park & take part in live nativity.
Make bells from egg boxes.
Make those German cinnamon cookies
Decorate said cookies
Make paper chains.
Movie nights with Christmas films (ideas please)
Cinema to see Christmas movie.

Some of these are bigger than others & will be better for the weekend, what would you do?

There are 2 great sites, DLTK and Enchanted Learning, both have lots of printable stuff. Xmas colouring sheets, Santa puppets, etc , all very easy to do. We don't do an Xmas activity every day now as the older ones have so much going on at this time of year. Other things we do are, go for a walk & count the Xmas trees, sing Xmas songs. Northpole.com is an excellent website where they can click on the elves, hear stories etc.
Good films are The Santa Clause 1&2, Home Alone, Santa Buddies.

Jesus won't you be sick of Christmas by Christmas day?

Sounds hell on earth
You'll be sick of Xmas by week one
Plus if they go to nursery & school they 'll be overdosing onxmas anyway

I've always wondered how fed of Christmas the parents get with these things too! OP, have a look at The Imagination Tree (blog) for crafty ideas, and I'm pretty sure she links to lots of other blogs that do this sort of month-long activity.

MIne are 4.9 and not quite 2, so we won't do this for another year if at all.

Polkadot
Jesus won't you be sick of Christmas by Christmas day?
Erm going with that thought, how about attending the 4 advent services, a carol concert and a crib service on Christmas Eve?

Great ideas, thank you. Was wondering if we'd keep it up for long, or if might we end up skipping a few days! The advent services & carol concerts are good ideas. The crib service I'd already thought of, usually go to it instead of midnight mass these days. School is having a cristingle service and a Christmas concert. Not heard of a nativity as yet.

In terms of craft, I've bought a load of stuff from the pound shop. Mine are just 3 and 6. I said we could do something each weekend from now. Today's was a nativity scene, which involved sticking foams shapes on a back ground. They loved it . Next week, we're making paper chains for their bedrooms

I would include a few days of much more chilled stuff for when the kids are tired - listening to carols, eating a mince pie, listening to a story, Christmas-scented playdough, doing something on the cbeebies website.

The cbeebies art magazine is quite good, bought it today and DD (3.4) loved making some things this afternoon, There are loads of crafts and activities in it.

Yeah a few quick and easy days needed:-
Hot chocolate
Christmas DVD
Paint a picture with red and green paint- any picture
Paint a picture with gold and silver paint and glitter
Cut out Christmas tree shape and decorate with crayons
Get some Christmas stickers, Tesco or Wilkos and stick on 'cards' or bauble shapes (hole punch and hang on tree)
Marzipan fruits- (just faff around with marzipan)
Peppermint creams
Paint pine cones with glue (using paintbrush) and roll in glitter
Walk to bakers and choose a Christmas themed cake/biscuit
Write to Santa
Ice ready made biscuits and decorate
Have hot ribena/vimto and mulled wine!
Make a mobile- hang Christmas pics onto a coat hanger (might not look the nicest but easy)
I've looked at making snow globes but you need to buy glycerin (I think) and a glue gun to seal lid so too much hassle for me this year.

Cbeebies website is good, only looked at the make & colour page. I was thinking of getting christmassy print outs for them to colour - eg tree, santa, snow man, angel etc. Thats low key.

My DC are 10 and 13 now but when they were little we used to:

Go out to Lakeside in the evening (when it was quieter ) to see the lights. Then they'd fall asleep in the car and go straight to bed.

Trip to Father Christmas steam train ride .Once we went to Deal Castle in Kent.

Feed ducks or reindeer at Visitors Centre (and some do craft days or adventure trails)

Film and hot chocolate - make some cookies before.

Wrap up warm and walk round looking at the neighbours trees

Your older DC might take some old toys to a Charity Shop so that a younger child could have them.

We used to go to a local garden centre to buy our tree.
They'd trim the end and bag it it netting.Then we'd all carry it home.

We have an advent tree with a little cupboard filled with tiny decorations .My DD loved putting each one in it's 'box'

I always take them out on their own to buy a present for their sibling.(And spend some time alone with them)

We're doing something similar but my list includes (DD is 3.1):
- walking/driving around the village to look at the Xmas lights in people's houses
- going to local town when it will be dark to look at lights and go for a babycino (the babycino being DD's idea of heaven)
- delivering Christmas cards to the neighbours
- going to toy shop for DD to choose an Xmas present for 6mo DS

Some of the play dates we already had in the diary are also being dressed up as Xmas activities so we will go to E's house to deliver her Xmas card and, as this friend & DD love play dough & always end up doing it together, will take some red & green play dough & say that its for them to make Xmassy shapes with & overlook the fact that it will inevitably end up turning into a sludge coloured sausage!

Grandparents are taking us all out on a Father Christmas steam train day, with lunch included. Last year DD helped her pops prepare the brussel sprouts on Christmas eve!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE that DLTk site queenmaeve

PS is construction paper what the Canadians call sugar paper? or thick paper?

Make/decorate salt dough decorations
Print a Christmas tree colouring sheet and let them at it with paint/glitter/stickers
Take an old toy to the charity shop, because FC/Santa is always pleased when children pass on their old toys
Go to see the Christmas lights

Movie recommendations - Arthur Christmas, Polar Express, The Snowman, The gruffalo

Steam train ride is good. Some more options that are less expensive:

Donate a toy/money to appeal for less fortunate kids
Walk around the neighbourhood looking at Christmas lights
Learn and sing a carol

Also, I love the way people come onto a thread in the Christmas season asking for Christmas things to do specifically to say 'won't that all be a bit too much of Christmas?'

Go to town to see Christmas lights/tree, babyccino, get Christmas books from the library whilst we're there.

Marking place to read in the morning.

Make reindeer food for leaving out on Christmas Eve.
Visit a reindeer farm ( if you can find a local one )
Ice skating
If you're near enough Winter Wonderland in Hyde park

Oh forgot Baker Ross usually have some good Christmas crafts.

We are planning this as well.

So far we will be:

Going to pantomime
Making hand print cards
Making gift tags
Visiting friends/family to deliver presents
Go and look at lights
Xmas movie and hot chocolate day
Visit reindeer
Make decorations
Decorate tree
Cinema
Dd and I will have a shopping trip to buy a party dress
Writing to Santa

Have you looked on Pinterest? There are loads of lovely kids christmas ideas on there.

Oh, it's fab, I do it every year! If you are organised then it's fun and never a chore. And I speak as someone who's opinion of doing things with the kids is more "do I have to?" rather than "won't this be fun?!" It doesn't have to be major operations, some it can be really nice and simple like reading a Christmas story together. And don't forget that there are usually lots of Christmas things you do anyway that can count - school nativity, visit to FC in a store etc. I have just done my calendar for this year - I keep it each year so don't have to keep thinking of 24 different things to do! I have one of those fabric advent stockings like this and you just shove a slip of paper in each day with the activity written on. You can usually find these in advent calendar sections - I think our one was originally a M&S advent calendar with choc coins in each pocket. Anyway, two best tips for anyone who hasn't done it before:

1. Save the longer projects for weekends rather than after school.
2. Write a list of everything you will need for all the activities and get it all before December starts. Then you will always have the stuff ready and won't have a daily panic of going shopping to buy glitter etc.

Things we do that haven't been mentioned are:
1. Make pomanders. These are quite involved and need specialist ingredients if you do them properly but we just stick cloves in oranges and wrap some ribbon round it. They don't last that long but so much less hassle than proper ones.

2. A 'fill in the blanks story'. This was a new thing I did last year and was their favourite. Without telling them what it's about you ask them for a list of nouns, adjectives etc. and then you fill these in and read out the strory at the end. Something like this. That example is very dull but I wrote my own and you can make it really funny. I wrote a story about our family at Christmas and did things like "Daddy put on his special Christmas outfit which was ....(name an item of women's clothing)..." or "Mummy served Christmas dinner and everyone said it tasted like.... (name something disgusting, eg a slug)....". DCs thought it was the funniest thing ever

3.Decorate Xmas biscuits. I've foudn the most stress-free way of doing this is to make the dough yourself and stick it in the freezer until needed). Get some Xmas cookie-cutters and let them do that, then just give them a bowl of icing and Xmassy sprinkles and let them go for it.

4. Make a Yule log ie. buy a Swiss roll, give them some chocolate icing and thens tand back and prepare to clear up the mess!

5. Paper snowflakes. Those things where you fold a sheet of paper into quarters and then cut out a pattern along the edges.

6. This simple drawing game went down well

Aren't any of you worried about overkilled? Creating an anti climax?

I love Christmas, and am very looking forward to geeing it up...but I think this idea is too contrived.

I think it's better to let it all happen naturally myself. x