As my kids get older, I’ve wanted to find some creative ways to help teach them Christmas joy, rather than just the idea of receiving gifts on Christmas Day.
In our family, we focus Christmas Day itself on the birth of Jesus and not the visit of St. Nick, but Advent offers such a wonderful time to make preparation for this joyful celebration, and this year I wanted to find ways to help my kids celebrate it on their own levels.
Many of our friends do the “Elf on the Shelf” and I think it is a fun idea for the kids to find the elf each day, but since we don’t really focus on Santa, it wasn’t a good fit for us. I mentioned on Facebook that I wanted to find a way to do an act of service or random act of kindness each day with the kids, and you guys gave me some wonderful ideas!
Our Advent Plan:
Each day of Advent we try to do a random act of kindness. We have used a Christmas angel with our kids (sadly, she’s no longer available, but any cute angel doll will do!) and she has helped quite a bit herself (picks up a toy that was left out overnight, gives the kids a piece of homemade chocolate, etc) and holds a note with a suggestion for our kind act for the day.
So far, some of our fun Advent kind acts have been:
- Making gifts for the UPS man, postman, etc
- Making “I love you” cards for grandparents
- Donating savings to different charities
- Bringing the man ringing the bell at the grocery store a cup of coffee
- Sending gifts to new moms and babies
- Making a gift basket for the midwives helping in this pregnancy
- Paid for the groceries of an older lady checking out in front of us who only had a couple of items
- Left coupons and dollar bills on the (healthy) isles of the grocery store
- Given gifts secretly to families in need in the community
- Given homemade lotion bars or teas to elderly or hospital bound
We are still hoping to do things like visit a nursing home, take small gifts to emergency workers, volunteer at local charities, etc.
I found the picture above with ideas for each day, and it has been fun to think of our own too.
I know several of you mentioned doing something similar, and I’d love to hear how it is going for you! Anything I can do to plan and reduce my holiday stress is a big win.
Have you ever done anything like this with your kids? Any other ideas to help encourage participation in the Holiday season? Please share below!
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