The scent of pine and cinnamon fills the air. Christmas carols ring out in the mall and on the radio. Houses dance with lights and fragrant wreaths adorn doors throughout the neighborhood. Family and friends gather together. It is a time of traditions that kids remember and pass along to their own children. Here are some simple family traditions that are fun, memorable and easy.
- Create an Advent Book Calendar by wrapping 24 Christmas or winter books and have your children open one each day through Christmas Eve. As they get older, they can help to wrap the books in November. It is fun to have the Christmas story read on Christmas Eve. The books can be numbered like an advent calendar or simply wrapped and kids can take turns choosing which one to open.
- Make a Peppermint Stick Straw by having your kids stick a candy stick into an orange or mandarin orange until they can suck the juice through the candy. You can read more about this tradition here.
- Take Holiday Photos of Your Pets. We usually think to take holiday photos of the family, or at least the kids. But, holiday photos of the pets are really fun and will make you smile year after year. This is as simple as putting some decorations near them or on them and pulling out your camera. Greg and I used to make our pets’ photos the feature of our holiday cards before we had kids, but I admit the kids have been featured on the cards since they were born. When you have four babies at once, everyone wants to see their pictures and see how they grow and change!
- Go See Holiday Lights in Your Community. It is fun to drive to holiday light displays where people go all out with festive decorations. Search online to find out where the best holiday lights are and drive there and enjoy them as a family. We also like driving or walking around and seeing lights in our own neighborhood. We enjoy this so much that I’ve written three posts on it! The links are within the sentence above.
- Go on a Family Nature Walk and Collect Things to Make Potpourri. It fills your home with a wonderful fragrance and as you look at it, it reminds you of fun times spent as a family. Learn how to do it here.
- Have Your Children Make Cinnamon Sugar to give as gifts. Find out how, including a recipe for cinnamon toast in my post. It is inexpensive and really fun. Our kids have a sense of pride when they give gifts they’ve made themselves.
- Make Mason Jar Holiday Lights. This can be a kid craft or a whole family activity. It is an inexpensive and fun way to add to the holiday decor. You can put names and dates on the bottom so you remember year to year who made each one. Find our how to make these here.
- Make Cards for People in the Community Who Are ill or Alone. Have your children make homemade cards for people who are experiencing illness or are alone for the holidays. This can be people they know, or children at a local hospital or residents of a local nursing home. Homemade cards from children make people smile and spread cheer. We read about a child who was ill on the news who wanted cards because, sadly, he did not know how many birthdays he had left and the kids all made him cards and we sent them in the mail. Making cards for others is a great way to teach children about kindness.
- Have each child give an ornament to another child in the family each year. If you have one child, give an ornament to your child each year. These can be store bought or homemade. Write the date on a tag on the ornament and put it in an ornament storage box. When your children leave home, they will have a box full of Christmas ornaments to take with them for their own tree. The tags will remind them of family and fun times spent together.
- Make Apple Cider in Your Slow Cooker. If you’d like to get fancy, you can serve it in mugs with pie crust baked onto the edge! Here is my recipe for slow cooker apple cider with a pie crust edged mug.
Confessions of a New Mummy says
There’s some lovely ideas here! We go to watch the local Christmas lights switch on and my husband and children have started to make sweets for us to enjoy over Christmas, which they love! Thanks for linking up #TwinklyTuesday