I am so excited to be given the opportunity to guest blog for the Right@Home™ Web site and I look forward to sharing with all of you. I am a busy mother of two and spend my time sharing fun family ideas on my own Web site,
MomAdvice.com. We focus on creative ways that families can interact with one another, homemaking solutions, family-friendly recipes and how to do all of that on a budget.
Today I wanted to share a special holiday tradition in our family called, “The Christmas Jar.” While my family uses it to celebrate Christmas, you can use this activity to honor whichever holiday you celebrate. The only supplies you need are a recycled jar, some paper, and a little creativity. Your jar can be festively decorated or just a simple ribbon with a bell, but what you do with the outside of the jar is far less important than what you do to fill your jar.
Tucked away inside our jar are 25 days of fun activities that we do as a family that lead up to Christmas morning. Written on little slips of paper, we draw one slip each morning and complete the task at hand. You can change the activities as your child ages and as their interests change or you could also number the tasks within your jar, if you want your activities to fall within a certain order.
Here are some of the activities my family has included in our Christmas Jar:
1. Watch a Christmas movie or holiday show on television.
2. Go see the Christmas lights in the neighborhoods in your pajamas.
3. Drink a mug of hot cocoa under your Christmas tree.
4. Open one gift early.
5. Bake cookies and take a plate to the firefighters. See if you can get a tour of the fire station and the engines!
6. Write a letter to Santa to leave on Christmas Eve.
7. Make a snowman.
8. Pop popcorn and play a board game together, while listening to holiday music.
9. Go to the dollar theatre and see a movie.
10. Go to the library and pick out books about Christmas. Read them together.
11. Give the kids a bath while Christmas carols blare into the bathroom. See who can sing the loudest.
12. Get or make stocking stuffers for Dad.
13. Write a note to each member in the family to tell them how special they are and what you love about them. Leave them in their stockings.
14. Put together a box of items to donate and take your child with you to donate them. Ask them if they would like to contribute something that they have outgrown.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to make really wonderful memories for your children.
My true goal, as a parent, is to only leave my children a legacy of amazing memories…not a legacy of stuff under the tree.