Kids Fun Stuff to Do Over the Holidays

Every year at Christmas while my kids were young, we came up with our own little traditions that were fun and kept my kids busy while on vacation from school and they were never saying that they were bored.

One of their favorite traditions, no matter how old they were was making Christmas cookies and it wasn’t just the decorating and eating them that was the big deal! On Christmas Eve we would put two dozen cookies in two different tins with a few wrapped chocolate candies and little candy canes, we would all get in the car and go on a quest for the best decorated houses in the neighborhood. One of our neighbors would end up with one of the prize cookie tins and one of our relatives would end up with the other after everyone in the car voted on which was the best.

Sometimes the weather gets the best of us and we would end up staying inside at home during the days off of school so besides making cookies we would string popcorn for the Christmas tree, make paper chains that represented the days left until Christmas, clean out toys that were no longer played with or broken and fix clean and donate them to non-profit organizations that could give them away. Making hot chocolate was another favorite but we never made plain old hot chocolate, the kids would make their own recipes by adding different things to each cup that we made. Adding a candy can for a stirrer, putting crushed candy cane on top of whipped cream, adding a couple drops of candy flavoring like vanilla or peppermint, popcorn might not sound good to you but it did to my son when he was five! Letting the kids add to their hot chocolate what they thought would be good was fun! Usually a small sample cup was necessary just in case something turned out to really not taste good at all. Letting the kids use their imagination and a few ingredients out of the pantry was interesting, entertaining and someone always came up for the winning concoction that everyone liked and while watching the traditional shows and movies we all got our own sample to enjoy.

Helping another family was always something that we liked to do; it wasn’t always easy to help another family on our own so we would help pick a few families with our church to help. Collecting and packing items for a family was always something that always paid off when the kids seen the faces of families that we delivered food and gifts to. One year there was a family that didn’t have a tree, their tree was a paper one that the kids had cut out and colored and taped to the wall and we were able to acquire a fake, already decorated tree for them, delivered it Christmas Eve and we had never seen so many tears of joy until then, especially when the parents could tell their children that Santa would definitely be paying them a visit that night.

My kids are starting their own little families and are keeping some of the traditions, making changes to old ones to make them even better or mixing a couple together, making them their very own.


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