This year, we’re rounding up some of our favorite bloggers to get their thoughts on faith and family. We asked them:
What are your favorite Christmas
activities to do together as a family?
Danika of Thinking Kids
Every year just after Thanksgiving, we trek to the local Christmas tree farm. The farm has a store filled with rooms of specialty ornaments and every year our children each choose an ornament for the tree. I mark the child’s name and the year on the bottom of the ornament with a permanent marker. We return home for hot chocolate and spend the afternoon setting up our tree and decorating for Christmas.
When we take down the tree, I store the ornaments for each child in a separate box. Once our adult children are settled in their own homes, I give the ornament box to them as a starter set. It’s really fun to see what the kids chose over the years, and to see them talk about the memories they have of each year.
Leah of As We Walk Along The Road
We like making gingerbread houses from a kit. We always have an evening of putting them together. We also have “Cookie Day” which is a day that we make cookies or other goodies.
We have books that we just get out at Christmas time to read, and I enjoy reading the Christmas books and adding to them through the year.
Aurie of Our Good Life
We enjoy taking car trips to look at the lights on houses; we go to a local shopping village that does an AMAZING display of lights and while we walk through them we sit on hot cocoa and eat hot pretzels. Each year in the beginning of December we travel to New York City and go to Macy’s and Rockefeller Center to see the big tree. As a family we pack Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes and the girls each pick an angel to shop for off of our local angel tree.
Heidi of Our Out-of-Sync Life
With the extended family, if the weather cooperates, sledding is our favorite Christmas activity. We also love to play games and bake together. Making new tradition with our kiddos by doing specific daily activities to keep our focus on the true meaning of Christmas.
If you only had 10 minutes for a Christmas
activity, what would you choose?
Danika of Thinking Kids
We did a Christmas ornament activity this year that only required about ten minutes for the children to participate, with just a little extra work on the part of my husband and I.
My husband took a large fallen branch and sliced it into three-inch wide cross-sections with the saw. He drilled a small hole in the top of each circle, which took him just a few minutes.
One morning this past week, the children and I made Christmas ornaments by stamping each side of the wooden circles with a child’s handprint (we used acrylic paint). That way, we had two handprints (for two separate children) per ornament. When the paint dried, I labeled each side with the correct child’s name and age. We did this until there were enough Christmas ornaments for every family member on our list to have an ornament with each child’s handprint. Believe it or not, the whole activity took about ten minutes.
Later, I tied thin ribbons through the holes on top of the ornaments, wrapped them up, and we had cute, rustic gifts!
Leah of As We Walk Along The Road
Reading Christmas books or gift wrapping- the kids enjoy getting into this now that they’re older, and they like to wrap with me.
Aurie of Our Good Life
A scavenger hunt in the snow
Building a snow family
Making an ornament
Stringing popcorn
Heidi of Our Out-of-Sync Life
Teach our kiddos a Christmas Hymn. Sadly the traditional hymns are not begin passed down.
Read the Christmas story from Luke.
Read a Christmas book.
