With just a week left until Christmas, my young (pre-school age) son is bouncing off of the walls thinking about the holidays. He’s got his wish list prepared. He’s literally counting the days until the 25th. He has so much energy and enthusiasm right now that he doesn’t know where to put it and that’s creating some issues around the house. He’s making some poor choices (sorry Mr. Cat, that I wasn’t there to monitor the boy more closely!) and we’re all kind of on edge.
Mama recently found a great outlet for the boy’s holiday enthusiasm and I thought I’d share some of her ideas. We’ve found that with our son, it’s great for him if he as a holiday “project” that’s creative, constructive and holiday themed when he gets home from school each day. Each project challenges him mentally, creatively and still channels all of that holiday enthusiasm while he’s “thinking about the holidays.” But he’s not obsessing over them and just running amok with anticipation.
1) Making Holiday Ornaments
– Mama is teaching him to sew felt mitten ornaments for as many people in the family that he can. They made a pattern of the mitten that’s the size of his hand right now. Mama does the cutting of the fabric. Our son picks out the decorations (bells, snowflakes etc) that he wants on them. Mama makes a single stitch for each of the doo-dads to hold them in place. Then the boy sews them on. He sews the outer edge of the mitten. Mama helps around the thumb. He can stuff them, and do the closing sewing and it’s done. Daddy got his ornament early for his birthday a couple of weeks ago. It was AWESOME! I know it’s one that I’m going to treasure forever.
2) Paper Chain Calendars
– If your child needs a visual to understand exactly how far away the holiday is, then may we suggest letting them make a paper chain calendar. It’s a great way to keep a young child still for a while and for our son, it was developing his fine motor skills cutting construction paper, taping the links, and numbering them.
3) Holiday Decorating
– In our house, the boy is on a mission to cover every available inch of drywall in construction paper holiday decorations. So far we’ve got a forest of fir trees, a drawer full of stockings and one lonely snowman. But the house sure does look festive in a pre-school sort of fashion.
4) Holiday Cookie Baking
– It’s surprising how much a young child really can help in the kitchen, if you accept upfront that a)there’s going to be some spillage and b) it’s going to take longer than if you did it yourself. If you embrace that, it sure can be fun for everyone.
So those are the four suggestions we have and the tactics we’re employing in our house to keep every one sane. What do other people do to channel all of that holiday energy in their children? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Please, I’m begging…afterall we’ve still got a week to make it to the 25th!
