Excerpt from my Book - Fun Through the Seasons

For you, your children or your grand-children. Below is a small excerpt from the December Chapter of my book, Fun Through the Seasons

Hope you enjoy it and maybe do some of the activities listed below with your family. 

 

Celebrate an Old-Fashioned Christmas

What Christmas carol is a favorite of parents?

Silent Night!

December brings with it the first day of winter and Christmas. Soon you will be watching for the first snowflakes of the season and getting together with your family and friends.

Celebrate an old-fashioned Christmas with all its sights, sounds and smells.

Add some old-fashioned Christmas sights to your house by popping popcorn and making strands to string on your Christmas tree. Hang cookie cutters on your tree, string them across your mantle or use them as napkin rings.

Sprinkle powdered sugar on large pinecones and make a small grouping of ‘snow covered pinecone trees’ to set on a placemat and put it in the middle of your kitchen table.

            

Add some old-fashioned Christmas sounds to your house by hanging jingle bells on your front door and playing Christmas music on your radio or CD player. Light your fireplace and listen to the crackling of the warm fire on a frosty morning. Sing in a choir and listen for Santa calling, “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

 

Add some old-fashioned Christmas smells to your house by baking sugar cookies and spicy pies, lighting cinnamon scented candles, stirring your hot cocoa with peppermint sticks, making cinnamon dough ornaments to hang on your tree and, of course, putting up a piney smelling Christmas tree.

 

Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, said, “Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.”

You can visit a neighbor and present them with a plate of cookies or read a Christmas story to a younger family member or friend. Some good holiday books are:

Berenstain Bears Old Fashioned Christmas, The Polar Express, The Night Before Christmas, The Berenstain Bears and the Joy of Giving, God Gave us Christmas, A Christmas Carol, Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, Olivia Helps With Christmas, Snowmen at Christmas and Bear Stays up for Christmas.

The spirit of Christmas lives in your heart. Give the gift of love and friendship. Make homemade gifts; share your voice by going caroling in your neighborhood. Have a family fun night each week. Pop popcorn and watch a Christmas movie.

But, most of all, remember what Dr. Seuss said in The Grinch That Stole Christmas. He puzzled three hours till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before, “Maybe Christmas,” he thought…“doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps …means a little bit more!”

And what happened, then? Well, in Whoville they say – that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!

This is also the time of year we make Christmas decorations and write poems about the season.

Gather your pencils and paper and write down what you like and do not like about December. Write down rhyming words and words that start with the same letter. Here are some words that come to my mind:

Icicles and shiny bicycles, white snow and warm cocoa, skates and skis, frozen ponds and frozen toes, slushy ice and Christmas mice, mittens and boots and Santa Claus suits, frigid winds and fat snowmen, sledding and sliding, red birds and red cheeks and sniffles and sneezes.

M & M Icicles

What do elves learn in school?

The elf-abet!

Tie M & M icicles on the outside of presents for decoration or place them in a pretty bowl for people to eat.

For each icicle, cut a piece of clear plastic wrap approximately 3 inches wide and 6 inches long. Place red and green M & M’s all in a row down the middle of the plastic wrap. Fold over the plastic on both sides and tie the ends with a thin colorful ribbon.