We love to share our Christmas activities! Click on the links below to see what we did in previous years, or keep scrolling to see what we did this year:
Christmas Tree Theme (2013)
Christmas Tree Theme (2012)
Books
We borrowed books from two of our local libraries (shown below) and combined them with our home collection (not pictured) and had a TON of Christmas themed reading material to last the whole season. So much fun. The kids' favorites were: Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and A Pussycat's Christmas.
Letter Recognition - Christmas Tree
Little M&M worked on his alphabet and fine motor skills with this simple craft. He enjoyed peeling the stickers and matching the letter on it to one on the tree. I would say the letter out loud each time, and he surprised me a couple of times when he was able to say it first!
Pom Poms and Tongs
This is an activity Little M&M pulls out on his own quite often. This time, I pulled aside only Christmas colored pom-poms, then let him pick them up and drop them in a cup. He loves this.
Christmas Tree - Ornament Counting
This is an activity Honey Pot has done in the past; although, she used to only do the smaller numbers. This time she did all the way up to twenty. The printables come from Confessions of a Homeschooler.
Little M&M gave counting with one-to-one correspondence a try too!
Dot Marker Candy Canes
Honey Pot needs to wear a patch for multiple hours each day to strengthen one eye due to amblyopia. So during those hours we have what we call "Patch Time," which is a time of sit-down, up-close activities such as writing, coloring, crafts, puzzles or reading. Sometimes, at the kids' request, I have to come up with crafts quickly off the top of my head. This is one of them. I just printed candy cane templates, and let the kids use dot markers as they pleased. Little M&M stamped in random fashion, but Honey Pot chose to make patterns!
Candy Cane - Tape Resist Paintings
Then I printed a larger template, and covered sections with masking tape. When painted over, I would remove the tape and the candy cane would be striped. As it turned out, Honey Pot chose to paint her own stripes, no tape needed! Both kids had fun with this.
Craft Stick Rudolph
I am a little frustrated that I never took a picture of the final product. But for this craft, the kids painted craft sticks brown. When they were dry, we glued them together in triangle. Then the kids added two googly eyes and a red pom pom nose. It turned out very cute.
Threading Jingle Bells
I intended on the kids sharing the package of jingle bells, and threading as many as they could onto a chenille stem. But Little M&M soon lost interest in this activity...
and so Honey Pot threaded every single one onto hers! She had fun using it as an instrument afterward.
Uppercase/Lowercase Match - Christmas Lights
This file folder game comes from Itsy Bitsy Fun. Honey Pot correctly matched all of the lowercase letters to their uppercase letter in the strand of lights. Cute activity, and requires a lot of focus!
North Pole Sensory Bin
Using some of the Insta-Snow I found on Amazon, I created this sensory bin for the kids. I cannot believe we haven't discovered this stuff sooner! Amazing! By just adding a little bit of water, you get this wet, powdery substance so similar to snow. The kids loved putting their hands inside, and created a small world with their North Pole characters.
Later, the asked permission to use their construction trucks too. Why not?
Torn Paper Santa's Beard
I gave the kids strips of white paper, and invited them to tear them into small pieces. Then we smeared glue under Santa's face, and they created his big white beard. They finished off his look by gluing a white pom pom to his hat too! Such a cute craft!
Building Towers with Red and Green Blocks
We love building things in our house. We have a whole shelf of toys with various types of blocks (Lego Duplos, wooden blocks, Mega blocks, Lincoln Logs, V-tech Go Go Smartwheels...) and they ALL get used. Today we Christmas-ified our block play by sorting out only the red and green ones. This is an activity in itself! Then we got to work.
I'm always amazed at my kids' creations.
Building towers with Little M&M...
In the Kitchen - Making Slime
We did this activity last year as well, during our Grinch theme. It was such a hit, we just had to do it again. This time we used red glitter glue. First the kids helped me prepare it in the kitchen...
then we played with it!
Stretchy...
"A donut!"
Rolling it into snakes...
Later, Daddy pulled it really thin and we could look right through it like a window!
We also made bubbles to pop!
And our favorite, monster-making. As a matter of fact, the eyes don't get stuck to the slime, so we made this into a sort of an I-Spy game. We hid numerous eyes inside the slime, and then had to squeeze and stretch it to find them all again.
Ball Pit Ball Christmas Bath
This was a fun and simple activity we put together for the kids' baths during Christmas week. Great play time!
The Night Tree
We did this activity last year as well, but kicked it up a notch! In the book, the family decorates a tree in the forest with edible decorations for the animals. Last year we just did bird seed ornaments, and this year we did those as well as popcorn garlands. We look forward to adding more items each year. We chose a tree in our backyard, so we could keep an eye on them.
Over the next two days,we saw creatures big and small come and enjoy the treats we left out for them! Squirrels...
Birds...
and even deer! It was so incredible to watch.
Merry Christmas!
