Oh friends! I'm so excited for tomorrow I can hardly stand it! It's December 1st tomorrow and with it we begin a month of fun, giving, and memory making as a family.
We do try to do these things all year round but I really love being able to specifically focus on them for this month of December.
I posted oh about a month and a half ago about our 24 advent activities and promised I'd post a complete list and links when I finally had everything worked out. And I just sat down this morning and finalized everything.
My first piece of advice for you in making out a list is to look at local activities to you. We have a community paper called "The Shoppers Guide" and the free activities are almost always listed in there each week. Facebook friends are another wealth of info on fun free or low cost local activities. Fill those in on your calendar then fill in the rest.
So here is what we ended up with and remember that a few of these are local things.
December 1st - Bethlehem Marketplace - at a church about 20 minutes away. This is our third year going and we're super excited.
December 2nd - free Magic Show in the next town over
December 3rd - make snow playdough I looked for a no cook recipe but the only one I found called for ingredients I don't have on hand.
December 4th - make Christmas cards/write Christmas letters for long distance relatives - for us this is grandfathers and a couple of aunts.
December 5th - play Christmas bingo - I printed off Christmas bingo cards and laminated them last year so we'll just pull those out but I think this is where I got them from.
December 6th - string popcorn and cranberries - we've never done this but it just seems like fun. I think we might wrap it around our porch railing for the birds and squirrels.
December 7th - Quincy Lights - a local thing
December 8th - make Christmas cookies - frosting in condiment bottles is GENIUS!
December 9th - make other fun treats for neighbor treat packages
December 10th - make dog biscuits for neighbors' dogs
December 11th - take treats to neighbors - chocolate dipped candy canes, pretzel snacks, chocolate dipped marshmallows maybe. We made the pretzel snacks last year too and they were simple and yummy. Even the youngest children can help with this one.
December 12th - a Christmas craft - I'll pick something fun and simple from pinterest
December 13th - Read Christmas books together
December 14th - make Christmas shape pizzas and have a Polar Express movie night
December 15th - Polar Express train experience sponsored by the local library
December 16th - Children's Christmas program at church
December 17th - start building lego nativity
December 18th - finish building lego nativity
December 19th - make and give gifts to awana teachers
December 20th - color nativity pages
December 21st - mini van express and put the colored nativity thank you pages in the mailboxes of houses that display the REAL reason for the season.
December 22nd - make gingerbread houses
December 23rd - Birthday cake for Jesus
December 24th - watch the Grinch Who stole Christmas (grinch floats anyone?) and visit Grammy's house for special Christmas eve present.
December 25th - a quiet day of opening gifts, playing with gifts, watching favorite Christmas movies, and just enjoying each other.
It's going to be a full month of fun! I tried to keep the busier activities balanced with simpler things on other days.
Tomorrow we will also be starting The Truth in the Tinsel devotions with the kids. I invested in the printable ornaments too - they are just pictures that the younger set can color rather than all the hands on gluing, cutting etc of the regular ornaments. I'll have the older kids make ornaments and print these for Sierra and maybe Sawyer. Super excited to have a way to include Sierra too in a way that is age appropriate for her.
AND I've been inspired by this to make one similar for Jay. I'm going to spend a bit of my afternoon today getting that put together. I want to have it hung up in our bedroom when he gets home tonight.
I'll be back next week with a list of the homemade gifts I'm making for the kiddos for our handmade holiday. Don't forget to get entered to win this week's giveaway! A gorgeous hair bow!
I'd love to read about what your family does for the holidays too so please feel free to comment and leave a link to your own blog/website so I can check it out!
No comments:
Post a Comment