Spending Christmas with your Children
The winter holidays provide you with the perfect chance to spend some quality time with your children. With the schools shut and many public places closed for the festive period, children can become bored very quickly - and when children are bored, parents are frustrated and quickly overwhelmed by the demands of their children. So to prevent this unnecessary disturbance within your home we’ve chosen 10 activities that you can do with your children this Christmas.
#10 – Watch a Film
There are plenty of movies available during the countdown to Christmas – take a few hours out of your day to watch a holiday film with your children. Better yet, why not take your children to the cinema to watch a film of their choosing?
#9 – Make Christmas Decorations
Activities that require the attention of your children are often the best types of activities for you to take part in; by stimulating your children mentally you can tire them out much quicker than if you were to stimulate them physically. Also, making decorations for your Christmas tree or for your home can be as simple as colouring paper and making chains from the coloured paper.
#8 – Bake Together
The importance of baking is that it is an activity that you and your children can do together – it doesn’t have to be the best cake in the world and washing up isn’t always fun, but it’s an activity that your children will love.
#7 – Write Christmas Cards
Writing Christmas cards is one of the simplest activities that you can do with your children – it doesn’t involve spending a large amount of money and asking the children to help you with this task can also speed up the process.
#6 – Wrapping Presents
Wrapping presents is one of the less excitable activities for yourself but children love to help out with tasks such as this. It goes without saying that you should avoid letting your children wrap their own presents as they may guess that it’s for them; it’s also advisable that you think of a story to tell your children as to why you are wrapping the presents instead of Father Christmas/Santa and his elves.
#5 – Write a Letter to Santa
During the first week of December or the last week of November we suggest that you ask your children to write a letter to Father Christmas or Santa stating what it is that they would like for Christmas this year. By doing this you can give yourself some last minute ideas as to what gifts you can get for your children – this task will also strengthen your child’s belief in Father Christmas.
#4 – Visit Father Christmas/Santa
Visiting Father Christmas can be a costly event but your children will love it and it can give you another picture to contribute to your photo album.
#3 – Put up a Stocking
Putting up a stocking for Father Christmas to fill with presents signifies the true beginning of the festive period and is often done of the first day of advent.
#2 – Go and Look at Christmas Lights
Looking at Christmas lights can be the highlight of an evening depending on which displays you visit. If you’re taking your children in the car we recommend that you do this activity approximately an hour before your child goes to bed as the constant movement of the car can relax your children and send them to sleep.
#1 – Decorate the Christmas Tree
Decorating the Christmas tree as a family is a tradition that has been passed down for generations. The majority of households will have their own way of decorating their tree and will have a specific process that they go through before they consider the tree to be dressed.
The one tradition that the majority of families celebrating Christmas throughout the UK will take part in is the tradition of placing either an angel or a star at the top of their Christmas tree – this tradition stems from the belief that by placing an angel on top of the tree you will be able to ward off evil spirits.
For more information on Christmas traditions or for advice on selecting gifts, decorations or other festive products you can get in touch with us here at UK Christmas World.