Give Your Kids a Fun Filled Christmas Vacation

Often I hear parents complain about what should they do with kids during vacations. With Christmas vacation round the corner, here is a small list of activities you can do with your little ones this vacation season.

Vansh and I usually spend vacations reading, painting, doing craft, gardening, cooking, playing board games and of course a lot of outdoor free play. We end up doing all of them or sometimes just 3 or 4 of these activities everyday. Also when you repeatedly conduct these activities with your kids, they become independent with some of them and learn to do them on their own.

Some of the books that we have read  and plan to read this Christmas include books on the Nativity story (the birth of Jesus), Santa Claus, the spirit of Christmas (sharing and being with your loved ones) and winter (the season of Christmas). Christmas has such a huge and lovely selection that it is a tough task to pick the best ones so, here is a list of what I used to read to Vansh.

1. Usborne Nativity Flap book – Usborne
2. The Polar Express – Chris Van Ahlsberg
3. Rudolph the red nosed reindeer – Robert L May
4. The Snowman – Raymond Briggs
5. How the Grinch stole Christmas – Chris Van Alsberg
6. Llama Llama Holiday Drama – Anna Dewdney
7. Books on Christmas with your child’s favourite character – Spots Christmas; Spots First Christmas, Peppas Christmas; Peppa Pig and the lost Christmas wish Dora’s Christmas Star, Dora’s Christmas Adventure etc. The list could be endless but this is just a tentative list
8. Robins Winter Song – Suzanne Barton
9. A very snowy Christmas – Diana Hendry/ Jane Chapman

Touch and Feel books for Christmas for 0+

Some books in this section include

1. Bright baby touch and feel merry Christmas
2. The Christmas series includes: Thats not my Santa; Thats not my Reindeer, Thats not my Snowman, That’s not my Angel.

Give a couple of these to your 1, 2 or even 3 year-old and you get a good 30 minutes to finish of something with a lovely sensory experience for your little one

Activity books for Christmas

1. My Christmas activity and sticker book –  Bloomsbury
2. Look and find Christmas activity book -Bloomsbury
3. All popular Cartoon characters have Christmas themed activity books – Peppa Pig: Peepa’s Christmas fun sticker activity book; Dora
4. Christmas colouring books – Many publications

There are many more options which you can easily find online or at a bookshop

Christmas themed activities

Last year when Vansh was still exploring 5 senses we did a wonderful 5 senses Christmas Themed get together where we had as much or more fun than the kids.

1. Touch – cotton for snow
2. Sound – Bells and Christmas carols as background music
3. Smell – My awesome sister in law baked a cake and it was smelling great!
4. Taste – The cake and gingerbread man cookies
5. Visual –  We had done up our place in white and red got home a small Christmas tree which the kids and moms decorated.

This year our focus is on crafts and painting and these are some of the ideas I have shortlisted for our Christmas themed activities.

Paper striped Christmas Tree: Cut up random sized paper strips and stick them. The exercise is a lovely activity for size sorting. If your little one is around 2.5 or so you can try this with just 3 or 4 strips and then increase the complexity.

Source: www.ziggityzoom.com

Hand Cut Christmas tree cards: Vansh loves to draw outlines of his hands and legs so i think this one he is going to enjoy. For kids who are not exposed to a lot of cutting, a caregiver can cut the handprints and then the decoration and pasting can be done by the child. Though I personally advocate giving Chidren and child friendly scissors at 2.5+ under supervision Source:

www.funsquared.com

Paper folding Christmas Tree: A simple Christmas tree activity well suited for around 2.5 year olds. For younger kids just decorating the Christmas tree with stars and pom poms is a good idea.

Source: http://www.kiddiefoodies.com/crafts/easy-christmas-tree-craft-kids

Footprint Christmas tree art: This makes for a very cute Christmas tree and kids love it but they also get very tickly when you are painting their feet.

Source: http://www.crafty-crafted.com/search/footprint%20art/

Christmas Carols

As a background music for a lot of our art activities we use Christmas carols this season, I am making a small list for you to use but youtube has a lot of options you can explore. Jingle Bells

1. Jingle 

2. Silent Night  – Holy Night 

3. 12 days of Christmas

4. We wish you a merry Christmas 

Free Printables to strengthen academic concepts

The internet is full of free Christmas themed printables which can be used for writing and math activities. We use a lot of these quite extensively so I am putting together a small list to help you begin with.

http://besttoys4toddlers.com/free-christmas-printable-pack-for-preschoolers/

http://www.3dinosaurs.com/wordpress/index.php/free-nativity-theme-prewriting-printable/

http://www.totschooling.net/2015/12/christmas-dot-marker-counting-printable.html

It would be interesting to know the if you tried out the activities and if your child enjoyed it too. So do send us a quick feedback!

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

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