Toddlers & Traditions: Creative Ways to Celebrate the Christmas Season

Our kids are growing up so fast and we believe that it’s very important to spend this time really focusing on the meaning of Christmas. To get things kicked off, I wanted to find fun and creative activities as we countdown to the day of Christmas! Instead using my genius this year, I decided that I would see what others had done and put a twist on it! In my search, I was able to find some really unique activities!! In addition to that, I was happy to see that great minds thinks alike and found ideas that I already jotted down! However, the ones mentioned in this post made me say, Hummmm. Some of the ideas has me so excited that I’m making a list for next year because we just can’t do them all!!

Since we’ve been trying to figure out how often we will do our list of activities, we ended the first day of December with a bible story from the Baby Bible Christmas Storybook by Robin Curie and coloring the first picture of our Advent calendar. We didn’t know how sharing was going to work because there is only one calendar this year. To our surprise, the two colored the candy cane in all sorts of amazing colors (black, green, red, etc) and off to sleep they went!

We’ll definitely be using many of the ideas I found from these bloggers:
Advent {books & bible verses} by tsj photography was absolutely the most meaningful post that I’ve read lately. She came up with the idea to wrap 25 winter related story books inserted with a bible verse for each night leading up to Christmas. After reading the bible verses, they placed them on a mini tree for all to see!! I so love this! You can’t help but to be reminded of the true meaning of Christmas! See the pictures from her site and PLEASE READ!!!

 The Ultimate List of Advent Activities and Christmas Countdown Fun by Adriel Booker provides a free printable list with tons of activities. Some of my favorites include:

• “Celebrate Advent with your littles” using the Jesus Storybook Bible (free printable)
• Clean out toy boxes and donate good quality items to an opportunity store.
• Serve a red and green themed meal.
• Invite a few friends over for a cookie decorating party.
• Visit a “live” nativity scene
• Visit a local farm and talk about what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph to have a baby in a stable.
• Make a silly Christmas video to email to friends (or post on Facebook) on Christmas day
• Wrap daddy’s gift with mommy (or mommy’s gift with daddy)
• Have a “fancy dress” code for dinner one night.
• Write a “new” Christmas carol, personalizing (re-writing) the words to one of your favorites.

I came across 25 Days of Christmas Fun with Advent Activities by Johanna’s Mama while looking through one of my Facebook Groups. She and her family were in search of things to do with their 3-year-old (me too!) during the holiday season. I’ll be adding these four to our list!

• Make hot chocolate with all the toppings!
• Make and Decorate our family Christmas ornament
• Make Glitter snow globes
• Go to the movies to see the new Annie

Man, I’m loving being a mom that much more! Let’s kick the season off right and begin our new traditions! I hope you and your family have a blessed holiday season! Before you go, any creative activities you want to add?