25 Days of Christmas - Any Suggestions?

Oh, be careful about the bars you set! I am amazed at the things I do once that my kids remember as a "tradition" they are cheated of if I don't do them again every year. Maybe mine are just odd kids, but the thought of having to do 25 days of crafts every year for 10 years makes me a little faint.

How about a nice advent calendar? Or something similarly easy. Maybe the kids could add a loop to a paper chain every day and at the end put the chain around the tree.

I had an Advent "house" with small doors that would open. I filled each door with a note for each day before Christmas. My daughter would open the door for each day and then do what the note said. Sometimes the task was to do something kind for a neighbor just to be nice or to set the dinner table. Other times she was able to open a small gift that had been purchased at the dollar store. Other times the note instructed her to pray for peace at bedtime or think of someone that is lonely and find a way to put a smile on their face. We made it a ritual each night for her to open the door by shutting off the TV and focusing on the feelings of family and the holiday. She is 13 now and I thought she may have outgrown this practice, but she is looking forward to doing it again this year. Now I need to start thinking of age appropriate tasks.. a good exercise for me as well.

Trader Joe's has chocolate advent calendars for 99 cents each. I bought one for each of my girls. We also have an advent tree (table centerpiece size). I bought it from Lillian Vernon over 10 years ago. Each day, the kids take turns taking an ornament out of the little cubby hole and placing it on the tree. It makes me really happy how excited they get over these little ornaments. We do both of these things after dinner every day in December until Christmas.

Other traditions we have are the kids decorate our big Christmas tree (I put on the lights). We buy a Gingerbread house kit (on sale this week at Target for $8) and build the house during Winter Break. We bake cookies on a Saturday to deliver to our neighbors. Sometimes, I'll get a Christmas-themed craft kit and they can make things from it.

There are so many great ideas out there. Have fun!

The poster below was right in that you should be careful about "traditions" that you start. Here are 2 that we do at our home. they can be as low key or as lavish as you want them to be. We have cloth advent calendars for each child. These are hung up on the wall in the dining room. inside the pockets instead of goodies/treats there are little pc's of paper. On the paper are little things like "do something nice for your brother" "smile at mom" "take out the garbage" "do a secret nice thing" "write a note to your grandma" etc... each morning my kids take the note out. they don't show it to anyone else they just do whatever it is. at the end of the day we talk at dinner. sometimes the stuff comes up sometimes not. the other thing we do (and this one is probably more what your thinking of) we do gingerbread houses. We started out doing just one. but as the kids got older they wanted to do their own. we buy the kits on black Friday as that's when they are usually on a good sale. we put two people to a house. spouses are not allowed to work together. we let the kids pick partners. its funny now as 3 of them have spouses. grand kids decorate cookies. grownups do the houses. that's not going to last much longer as the grand kids are now 5,7 and 9 they will be doing houses soon too. but we do them and then get displayed on the buffet till after Christmas when they get pitched to the backyard for the birds.

Great ideas!

Make magnets or ornaments using recycled tops to glass jars

Paint your own Santa cookie plate and milk glass

decorate stockings

Make pipe cleaner reindeer

Make felt candy cane sleeves

make popcorn garland for the tree

sing Christmas carols

donate presents

make Christmas cards and send them to the troops

take a picture with Santa

make marshmallows and put them in hot cocoa

make Christmas gifts

that's all for now :) Feel free to email me or visit my blog and contact me for more ideas!

E.
http://www.babysignswithelizabeth.blogspot.com

What ages are your kids? So we know how to help you.
This one is for everyone though.
When my husband was deployed to afganistan over christmas we made him a christmas tree. I got a bunch of green construction paper and we all traced out hands. Ours was big on a full sheet of posterboard (you may not need it to be that big) so we had many cut outs of each of our hands. I drew a triangle on the posterboard and added the tree trunk (which we ofcourse colored brown) then we glued the handprints overlapping to make the tree. The littlest ones hands on top and biggest on bottem. The kids then decorated it with stickers that were sparkely and christmasy (lisa frank has great ones) we also used glue and glitter to make the garland and make out star on top shine. It was time consuming but lots of fun.
You can also make reindeer... trace your childs foot on brown construction paper and there hands on the color of their choice. Then get some big wiggly eyes and a red pom-pom nose. Glue the "antlers" on the back of foot print and the eyes and nose on the "face" of the foot.
You could also make hard tack (rock) candy. It is super fun.... very time consuming (makes your house smell wonderful for days especially if you use the mint ones last)but the powdered sugar can be a major mess. However we make it every year and every year I am cleaning the sugar up until easter and tell my MIL nest year your house... but we never do.
You can also make your own window clings out of glue look online to find out how.
Also there are tons of craft books at the library (kids crafts to adult) also check what kind of free programs your library has for the holidays (ours makes gingerbread houses, has story time in a cabin by the fireplace where Santa shows up and you can get free santa pictures instead of paying for them at the mall)
One year also I bought plain glass bulb ornaments and had the kids glitter marker them and we also did ones with the glitter stickers (like for scrapbooking) to spell out each member of our families name including the pets.
This year we are making out own dog biscuits and not only giving to our dogs and the dogs within our family (everyone in our family has at least one dog) but we are also going to take them to the local animal shelter. I thought about making cat toys too but sewing is involved in that one and I don't know if I want to get into that one just yet.
Also try to look for ways to serve others in your communinity. This is a great way to share the spirit of giving and teach generosity to your children.
There are great craft kids online (oriental trading has a bunch) that you can get like a dozen kits to make ornaments. I got 3 different sets last year and divided them up for each kid to make an ornament for a member of our family. Each kid gave grandparents, aunts, great grandparents, ect an ornament so they each got 3 different ornaments from my kids. We plan to do this again and take them to local nursing homes to give to the residents.
I'll maybe think of somemore ideas for you as I work on my plan for 25 days of christmas so I may post more later!
Hope this helps get those creative juices flowing! :)