Family Fun: Christmas Activities and Stuff

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Christmas Activities – Decorating the Tree

For Christmas this year, we recycled our tree from the previous year. Aristotle had a lot of fun hanging up the baubles, but I had to assist with the lights. Hercules pitched in with the singing and even hung up a few baubles himself – mostly all on the same branch so we had to discreetly re-position them. We also have our own Christmas train – we recycled Aristotle’s old Thomas trains. Aristotle used the Motor Road and Rail so the train could chug around the Christmas tree on its own. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough workable tracks (Hercules broke them) so we had to use the wooden railway tracks instead.

Christmas Activities – Home-made Fire Place

Inspired by all our abstract art fun earlier this year, I decided to paint a fireplace. I think it has a better effect compared to last year’s felt fireplace. The brightly coloured bricks to the right where the Christmas stockings are hung up over were made from rectangular pieces of felt stuck onto a large piece of cardboard. Why the combination and not just a felt fireplace or a fully painted one? Well, I kinda had both ideas at the same time and I couldn’t decide which way to do it. Since it didn’t make sense to have two fireplaces, this was the end result.

See: Painting the Fireplace…

Christmas Activities – Stockings for the Fireplace

Daiso were selling plain Christmas stockings for RM5, so I decided to get them instead of making my own stockings since they look nicer than my homemade ones anyway. Since they are plain stockings, the boys could still decorate them like they did last year – or rather, like Aristotle and I did last year. Aristotle couldn’t wait to get started on his stocking so this was what we did over the weekend… Inspired by the Foodimals from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, Aristotle decorated his stocking with a picture of Barry. Hercules still hasn’t gotten into the swing of stocking decorating so I guess I’ll be working on his stocking again this year…

Christmas Activities – Advent Calendar

Aristotle wanted an Advent Calendar so I thought we could make our own. While searching for templates, I found this fantastic post with 30 DIY Christmas Advent Calendars. I’m not sure I’d have the patience to work on something quite as elaborate as some of those designs, though. Since the main feature of an advent calendar that Aristotle is after anyway is the chocolate so I’m sure it shouldn’t be too hard to make something he’ll like…

Update: Check out our own home-made Advent Calendar…

If you want to borrow our template, you can download it here – Christmas Advent Calendar. The pocket envelopes are quite small so they will only fit a small toy or piece of chocolate each.

Christmas Shopping

As I mentioned in my previous post, Christmas should be less about the presents and more about presence but if you’re shopping for presents, why not get one of these educational toys perfect for holiday giving instead. Otherwise, I don’t think you could go wrong with these…

Practical, educational, but still fun. Yes, ever year I grow more and more like my mother – I cannot help but look for the practicalities when making gift choices.

Other Christmas Activities for Kids