Christmas Fun at Home

Christmas time is fast approaching and we are as busy as Santa is Christmas night. I feel like December is a busy month for everyone. There is holiday baking, lots of holiday parties and get togethers, Christmas shopping, present wrapping, etc. With how busy things have been this month I've been hard pressed to find time to think of special activities and crafts to do with my little man. However, one benefit of the hectic holiday season is that the holiday naturally provides lots of activities. We have gone light looking. He is entranced with all the bright colorful lights. We've gone to see Santa who he tolerated but wasn't overly impressed with. We baked cookies, which means that he played with flour and I ate cookie dough, and some cookies got made.  We also purchased and decorate a Christmas tree. And I'm surprised the tree is still standing given that one of our dogs keeps trying to pee on it, the cat keeps trying to climb it and Calvin really wants to play with all the ornaments.

While it is fun partake in the holiday festivities we don't always have the time or energy to do so. Sometimes my husband and I need to adult.  Luckily, the holidays also provide easy entertainment at the house for little ones. One Monday I took Calvin to the Dollar Store, one of my favorite baby supply stores, and gained inspiration and materials to create quick and easy activities.

One easy and cheap holiday purchase were the window gel clings. I bought a couple of packs and put the large pieces up on our sliding glass windows. This easy and cheap activity provided  about forty five minutes of entertainment.

He spent some time looking at the window clings. Then he explored their soft and squishy texture by poking them. He then started to take them on and off the door and arrange them in different patterns. Next he tried to see what else they would stick to. Lastly he tested their stretch ability, which turned out not to be very far, and they ended up in the trash shortly afterwards. This activity only costed me two dollars and it kept him entertained for forty five minutes, which gave me time to fold and put away laundry. I did keep a close eye on him during this activity since I was worried about him potentially trying to eat them. Luckily, he only tried that once and discovered that they don't taste good at all.

Another fun and simple activity was Christmas peek-a-boo. I purchased a variety of Christmas tins. I also purchased a variety of non breakable Christmas ornaments and decor that would fit inside the tins. I hid the decorations inside the tins and let him explore opening and closing the tins and finding the fun presents inside. This was a simple and fun way to practice opening gifts for Christmas time. He absolutely loved this activity and it kept him busy for close to an hour! His favorite item was a one dollar plastic ornament that would sing when touched. He played with this until I had to turn off the motion sensor. He enjoyed discovering all the fun toys and he liked taking out the presents and rearranging them in different tins.

While at the Dollar Store I got the inspiration for yet another easy toddler holiday activity, which was to make toddler discovery ornaments. They had clear plastic ornaments so I picked up six of those. I then looked for fun things to fill the ornaments with that would stimulate his different senses. I purchased peppermint candies, jingle bells and fun tinsel wrap. When we got home I took the tops off and filled the ornaments with the different items I had purchased. I then super glued the lids on and let him play with them. He loved looking at them and shaking them around and making music. I put on Christmas music and he danced around the house shaking his ornaments. This activity costed about five dollars and took about five minutes to put together. The ornaments kept him busy for about twenty minutes and he still gets them out whenever they are out and music is on.

And I saved the messiest and most time consuming indoor holiday activity for last. I thought it would be fun to make a Discovery bin with fake edible snow. I used the  edible dough recipe from

wildflowerramblings.com/sensory-play/edible-snow-dough/ .

I did make one addition to the recipe. I added a bunch of  edible glitter to give the dough that sparkly snow appearance. The dough turned out great. It was a mess to make but it looked like snow and held together well. I doubled the recipe since I wanted to have enough dough to fill the bottom of a large shallow tote. I spread the dough out in the tote and hid a bunch of fun holiday decor thru ought and let him explore.  The very first thing that he did was try and eat the dough. Luckily, it's edible and it doesn't taste very good so he lost interest in that. He had fun un-burying the toys. He also loved taking the dough out of the totes and making snow angels with his hand to spread it all over the hardwood floor.

Unfortunately, this activity is pretty messy for inside the house and it takes a few minutes to make, set up and time to clean up. However, it does clean up pretty easily. I was disappointed in the fact that it did only hold my son's attention span for about fifteen minutes though, but such is life with a toddler. Some activities hold their attention span longer than others. I did save the dough and will try it again this holiday season.

I hope that you enjoyed reading about and seeing pictures of some of my favorite indoor holiday activities with my little wild one. I hope that these activities inspire you to get creative with your little one and to explore the world together in a fun new way. Happy Holidays!