Christmas Thread : Nice things to do with small children over the festive period

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I've put this in the Christmas Thread and put Christmas in the title.

So, nice things - they need planning and they needn't cost loads , which is why it's nice to plan ahead.
I was thinking this when I found a tiny teddy bear in my room. One year I put a "Teddy Bear on Every Step" on Christmas Eve - tiny ones , collected over time (didn't cost alot), tucked into the corner of each step for safety.

Jars and Tealights to make a "Runway" in the garden for the sleigh. Either lighted tealights or those battery operated ones for safety (and more reliable than flames). I collect the salsa jars, chunky and a good size.

Advent treats - especially if you don't want chocolate,

Yes, I am a few raisins short of a Plum Duff, but hey , that's not so bad

Pintrest is your friend

I luvs you 70 I was just looking for some Christmas cheery threads. :)

How does Pinterest work?

Santa is clumsy in our house. He drops chocolate coins, candy canes and small presents all over the place.

There were even a few in the garden this year.

That's a cute idea lunar1

We do the elf on the shelf and last year to sound the arrival of the elf we did a north pole breakfast and DD and her cousin had decorated pancakes like this jennwa.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/santa-and-snowman-pancakes.html snow balls and chocolate milk. They each got their advent calendars wrapped up as a little gift from the elf. Throughout the month the elf was caught doing silly things and also brought the kids tickets to go to Santa's Grotto or to go to a free tree lighting.

I got a table top christmas tree from a car boot sale that is pre-lit and DD and I made these princess decorations sewvintageemporium.wordpress.com/?s=princess&submit=Search for the tree for her room. We then strung some heart shaped fairy lights around a dress up feather boa and put it on the headboard of her bed. If she touched them I took them down and she quickly learned not to touch. If your kids are too young for this you can always put the lights around their wardrobe or something.

We used safety scissors to cut out paper snowflakes which we stuck with sticky tape to white thread and hung them in the window of our living room with some fairy lights.

We had a family christmas movie night on 21 December (yule) and the kids helped me to make homemade pizza that was cut into christmassy shapes before being baked. sewvintageemporium.wordpress.com/?s=movie+night&submit=Search
We watched Elf and had sweet popcorn and hot chocolate. The kids fell asleep before the end of the film because we put sleeping bags and blankets down on the floor in front of the telly. The only lights were the tree lights and the tv. It was such a nice evening.

Cos the kids were only 3 we assembled the gingerbread houses (bought from Ikea - so they wouldn't have to wait for them to dry before they could decorate) the night before and they woke up to the dining room table covered in anything they could want to decorate a gingerbread house with. They had an absolute blast! On Boxing day we had a gingerbread house demolition competition and they demolished their gingerbread houses. DD dropped a heavy book on hers and my nephew drove his monster truck toy into the gingerbread house repeatedly until it was just pieces. Then they happily got stuck in eating bits of gingerbread house.

We took the kids to Poundland and I gave them each £1 and let them buy a gift for each other. Whe helped them to wrap the gifts (separately of course as they gifts were a suprise) and they were so excited to give them to each other on Christmas day.

We made gingerbread men to decorate and left one for Santa.

Oh and I got one of those self adhesive paper ring garlands and showed them how to do it and they sat for ages making long garlands to hang in the lounge.

That's all I can think of right now... I'm sure we did more fun things!

When mine were little we'd wrap them up and go out to look at Christmas lights - either in a shopping centre ( fairly late so they could sleep on the drive home) or round the local streets.

If we went to London, we didn't do shopping, just wandered about, had lunch, went round Hamleys then looked at Regent Street.

We went to Hyde Park three times (every other year) but it's too big and muddy now.

More difficult now to find things they want to do

Lovely thread

With Pintrest, sign up & you can look at lots of ideas for things like parties, weddings, Easter, Christmas. You can also 'pin' those ideas, like a computerised pin board, so you can easily find the ideas you like again.

Most of them will have links to the website they came from, in case you need details of how to do it etc,

Pintrest is brilliant for ideas. I have pinned so many ideas that I will probably run out of years to do them all.