Five Favorite Free Family Activities for Christmas

Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy - "Five Favorite Free Family Activities for Christmas"

Christmas is getting closer, daylight is getting shorter, and the weather is getting colder. You know what that means, right? Kids are going crazy!

At this time of year my boys are often cooped up and wound up, so it is very helpful to find fun and easy activities to help keep them busy, and help keep our sanity. Below is a list of five of our favorite Christmas activities. Most are no cost or very low cost, some are techie, others are crafty, but all are a great way to spend some time having fun as a family.

Hopefully you will find a new idea here to try, be reminded of something you used to do as a kid, and leave some ideas of your own in the comments.

Hide an Elf

There are several store-bought options for this fun activity, such as "Elf on the Shelf" and Christopher Pop-In-Kins, but you can certainly do this with any toy elf or even a Christmas-themed stuffed animal. The idea goes like this:

All during the month of December, the elf (or whatever) comes to your house to secretly check on the kids to make sure they are behaving. Each day the elf hides himself in a new location to be able to observe the kids. The game is for your kids to try to find the elf each morning. Of course, they are not allowed to touch him, or else he will "go back to the North Pole" for the year.

I can’t tell you how excited my boys get each morning as they try to find the elf. We have had to get very creative when hiding the elf including on top of the curtains, behind food in the pantry, in the scarf box in the closet, inside the fridge, and more. Nevertheless, they eventual find him and scream with excitement. Grant literally jumps up and down with joy. Now if we can just convince them to look for their shoes with the same diligence, getting ready for school would be so much easier.

Elf Yourself

Instead of just hunting for an elf, your kids (and you) can become elves! Each Christmas our whole family loves going to the "Elf Yourself" website at: www.elfyourself.com

This is a free website from the folks at www.jibjab.com where you can add pictures of your faces (by uploading, linking from Facebook, or using a webcam) and then you can stick your faces into crazy videos where you dance as elves to different styles of music. Proving that I truly have no shame, here is a link to my boys, wife and I doing an awesome Christmas disco:

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/rE2npecDIsoXXG25NM0l

When the extended family come over for Christmas, I am always sure to embarrass, I mean include them in the fun. I import their pictures ahead of time and we all enjoy watching grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, kids, and yes even our family dog dance like elves. Not Elvis … just elves.

Make a Christmas Chain

This one is definitely a blast for my past, as I remember making Christmas chains each year when I was a child. Granted I started making the chain in June so it was about 180 links long, but at least it kept me occupied. If somehow you have not heard about this craft, here is what you do:

• Take several sheets of colored construction paper.
• Cut the pages into long strips about an inch or so wide.
• Give each child enough strips to have one for each day from now until Christmas.
• Optionally let the kids draw on each strip of paper.
• Optionally let the kids number each strip of paper so they will count down the days to Christmas.
• Now let the kids roll each strip into a circle and link each strip to the next to make a chain. We used a glue stick, but a staple can work just as well.
• When done, hang up the chain and have the kids rip off one link each day until Christmas morning.

This can be just a fun art activity for the kids to draw on each link (as Mason and Grant did) or can be a great chance to practice handwriting and counting (as Carter did when he numbered his links). Also the chains make a great homemade decoration for your house (see picture above).

Play Christmas Video Games

Another geeky and great snowy day activity is to play Christmas-themed video games with your kids (and see how much they beat you). A perfect site for that is Coolmath.com.

Coolmath is a website with lots of games that stretch your mind and problem-solving abilities. They also have a page of games with a Christmas theme that are a blast to play with the boys. The games are all free and run right inside your web browser. Examples include Cargo Bridge Xmas Level Pack, Civiballs Christmas Edition, Sugar Sugar Christmas Edition and the ever-popular Super Santa Kicker (no Santa’s are harmed in playing the game). You can access all the games at: http://www.coolmath-games.com/holiday-Christmas-games-puzzles

Make some Snowflake Art

A fifth and final great low-cost / no-cost activity for kids is making paper snowflakes. I find that for the best chance of success, you can prepare the paper ahead of time for your kids. Most children have a lot of trouble folding the paper exactly right, which will lead to very odd-looking snowflakes. Here’s what I do:

• First you need to cut the paper so it is a perfect square. All you need to do is fold one corner to the other side so you can see the strip that needs cut off to make the paper square.
• From a regular 8.5 by 11 inch piece of paper I will make either one square 8.5 by 8.5 inches, or two smaller squares 5.5 by 5.5 inches each.
• Next I fold each square in half three times, starting with diagonal fold and folding the result in half two more times.

With a whole mess of pre-folded papers ready the kids can join you at the table to start cutting. I demonstrated one for the boys so they saw how it worked and realized they could cut anything but an entire side (or else it will fall apart). I was really surprise how intently they worked on their snowflakes.

My youngest son, Grant, preferred to just cut lots and lots of slits in his snowflakes, while my oldest crafted very detailed and creative designs. I was most pleased with my middle son, Mason, who is often the quickest to get upset if something goes wrong (which is not a good thing when scissors are involved). However, he was very focused and worked carefully to cut out some of the most beautiful snowflakes that night. (See pictures above for examples.)

As a final part of the project, Carmen worked with the boys to paint a canvas red, stick on one snowflake from each boy, and then cover the whole thing with a sealant. Now we have a work of art to put out each winter filled with snowflakes made by the boys, and with memories we all made together. (See picture above for final result.)

So how about you? What are your favorite easy, cheap and fun Christmas activities for kids? Be sure to share your helpful ideas in the comments below. After all, the kids are home on break now and we are all in this together!