Published on December 17, 2024
While the festive season so often revolves around time spent with extended family, visiting friends and relatives, and enjoying great food, having some activities for the children to enjoy is important.
Here at My Ohana, the second half of December is geared towards Christmas activities across all our nurseries, building up excitement with decorations and baked goods to bring home, and plenty of games and stories to enjoy together as a nursery family.
To help families out this festive season, here are some of the best (and easiest) activities that you can try at home and when travelling to see friends and family, to keep your children busy and excited about Christmas.
This is such a classic activity – and no, you don’t have to bake them from scratch. If you’re handy in the kitchen and are familiar with your settings, then baking some fresh gingerbread is a great way to spend an afternoon. However, if you’re away from home and need to fill some time, buy some plain gingerbread men and lots of icing and sweets, then let your kids decorate them themselves.
This is a really fun activity for those who live in flats or who don’t have open chimneys, and so find themselves being asked how Santa gets into the house on Christmas Eve.
Simply source an old and ornate looking key, and then have the children help you decorate it ready for Santa. Consider using nail varnish to paint the key itself, make a label with a note to leave him, and tie accessories to the key to help it stand out. Then leave it out on Christmas Eve, ready for Santa to come in.
If there’s one thing we know our children love all year round, in all weathers, it’s getting outside. Far from spending the Christmas holidays wrapped up in front of the TV, getting out and about is a fun way to burn off some energy – and continue your child’s learning!
Ask them questions about their surroundings, point out things you see, and talk about the plants and wildlife that you come across.
An activity that has remained a hallmark of the festive season for decades; cutting out paper snowflakes is the best way of teaching children that every snowflake they will ever see is entirely unique. Give them a circular cut out of paper folded right down and ask them to make small cuts and holes. When unfolded, it creates a symmetrical and incredibly beautiful decoration.
This isn’t just for kids – it really is a Christmas activity for the whole family. Joining a local group that is carol singing for a charity is the best way of getting involved and being part of something wonderful in your local area.
You can’t go wrong with a scavenger hunt – but making it festive is even more fun!
You can either set your scavenger hunt at home or take your kids to a Christmas market and get them to write down whenever they see something on the list – for example, someone drinking mulled wine, a lit-up snowman, and bright red tinsel!
It’s ‘Guess Who’… but with a twist! And the twist is that they’re all popular Christmas characters.
Write your kids’ favourite Christmas characters on cards and hide the names, then get them to guess who it might be with a series of ‘Yes or No’ questions.
It could be a Christmas movie that you used to love as a child, or a Christmas book that you still read every year even today.
Whatever it is, introducing your children to the stories that you loved as a child is a really fun way of keeping your own festive magic alive. Not to mention, it’s fun to talk to them about how much things have changed in movie making and in how Christmas books are written.
Yes, they’ll probably do this several times over the course of a single Christmas period – with every visit to Santa offering wish list templates to fill in, and nurseries up and down the UK making this a fun and thoughtful activity for all children to get involved in.
However, writing a letter to Santa is a fun way of finding out what they want for Christmas – not to mention it’s a good segway into some quiet time!
Another staple of the Christmas season in the UK is wreath making, whether it be for your front door, inside doors, or a bare patch of wall that you want to decorate.
Getting your kids involved is a fun way to unleash some creativity and end up with something beautiful to decorate your home.
Finally, if you want to get out and about over Christmas rather than staying at home, here are a few ideas of events to look out for…
· Visit Santa in his Grotto (often at local garden centres, sometimes even with reindeers and other friends!)
· Head to an outdoor Christmas light show
· Visit a local Christmas market
· Go and see a Christmas show or pantomime
Suffice to say, there are plenty of ways in which to keep your children busy during the festive period –even when your nursery has shut for the holidays and you’re spending nights on end away from home.
We hope this inspires you – and we can’t wait to see you all in January when we re-open our sites!
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