How do you handle holiday crafts?

[Guest]

I am completely and utterly overwhelmed. I see the blog posts of fun things people are already doing. I downloaded some of the free stuff from CurrClick. I have my own ideas of stuff I'd like to do. I pour over the Enchanted Learning site....oh my gosh - how do you figure out what you do during the holidays, when it comes to crafts? We did some for Thanksgiving, but not as much as I would have liked. (Didn't get my woven placemats done.:tongue_smilie:) There are so many ideas and if I only plan 1/wk. that means we only get 3 done before Christmas. If I plan more than 1, I'm not sure we'll get to it all! I feel that December is supposed to be a light, take-it-easy month and I'm feeling stressed!

 

How do you handle all the tempting holiday crafts and ideas?

[plain jane]

Ummmm, honestly? I don't read or visit many websites this time of year. :001_huh::tongue_smilie::lol:

 

Hear no evil, see no evil, DO no evil. :lol:

 

I pick a few of my favorite things (or the kids favorite things) and we do those. Each year I add a new thing or two so they can learn a different skill call it done.

 

I suppose I'd do more crafts if my kids were younger but I don't feel like I can take too much time off with my 9yo for crafts, especially since they get so involved at that age and can take several days. We must keep plowing through with our school work. :auto:

 

Sorry, I'm not much help, but honestly, I just don't let myself get tempted. :D

[JoyfulMama]

I find it fun to do a couple things, but not a bunch of things. :D

 

My kids don't need to do something BIG every day, but we do try to do something small most days, with something bigger once a week, and maybe one thing that would be more of a longer project.

 

Something small, for us, is different short story read-alouds. Or getting out one decorating item (candles one day, Nativity one day). A bigger item would be decorating, or making ONE type of cookies - one hour activity, 2 hrs max. A larger project for this year is making candles. Not necessarily going to happen in one day, and if it is one day, then it will be a REALLY long day, filled with movies as well. ;)

 

There are so many different activities out there simply because it will take a lifetime (or two) to do all of the best ones! :D

[LidiyaDawn]

Our ds12 doesn't care much for craft making and dd14 chooses and does her own. I know it's quite different with youngers, although even they could choose a select few that they want to do?

[PeterPan]

Your kids are 5 and 3. Totally take off school for the next month. Wake up every morning and sing Christmas carols, read a Christmas-themed story, memorize the next verse of the Christmas story (or whatever you like), and do a craft. Write Christmas cards and color Christmas pages. Find little things they can make to give as gifts.

 

Soon enough the days will come when you're truly too busy with schoolwork to stop for fun. You're not there yet. We took off completely from Thanksgiving to Christmas for most of our early years, and it was WONDERFUL, the best thing ever. Do it and enjoy! You've earned it! The winter will be long, with plenty of time for academics. :)

[Guest]

Your kids are 5 and 3. Totally take off school for the next month. Wake up every morning and sing Christmas carols, read a Christmas-themed story, memorize the next verse of the Christmas story (or whatever you like), and do a craft. Write Christmas cards and color Christmas pages. Find little things they can make to give as gifts.

 

Soon enough the days will come when you're truly too busy with schoolwork to stop for fun. You're not there yet. We took off completely from Thanksgiving to Christmas for most of our early years, and it was WONDERFUL, the best thing ever. Do it and enjoy! You've earned it! The winter will be long, with plenty of time for academics. :)

 

:iagree::iagree: Asolutely!

[King Alfred Academy]

I am completely and utterly overwhelmed.

 

I feel that December is supposed to be a light, take-it-easy month and I'm feeling stressed!

 

How do you handle all the tempting holiday crafts and ideas?

 

I was feeling the same way. I had the idea of making our own ornaments every day for our Jesse Tree. Then I remembered..."Hey, I don't want to be stressed. I don't want to be over-worked. I don't want to be so busy." So, I found a great resource that has the ornaments (yes, they're paper, but they will do) and the readings in one easy place. We are enjoying our study (my oldest accepted Christ this morning during our time talking about Adam and Eve :party:...wasn't sure if you saw my status on FB!)

 

Anyhow, I realized that in order for me to enjoy this Advent season, I needed to not be so eager to do too much. I needed to evaluate what it was I *really* wanted to focus on. I needed to figure out how much *I* could handle without getting crabby or feeling like a failure because we didn't get hand print reindeers completed. I needed to know my limits.

 

This is what I figured I could handle:

*Reading our Jesse Tree devotions every morning while drinking hot chocolate.

*Reading Jotham's Journey every night, with Dad, after dinner and lighting the appropriate Advent candle.

*Baking. We are going to bake something at least twice a week and pass it out to friends and neighbors.

*We'll make some sort of ornament to give to family members as part of their gifts.

*We'll read lots of great picture books about Christmas.

*We'll spend the first two weeks of Advent getting caught up on school work we have fallen behind on. (Thankfully, it's not much) Then we'll take off the final two weeks from formal studies. I'm thinking about doing a lapbook I found from A Journey Through Learning, but we'll see how it goes. If I am not feeling it, we won't do it.

*The boys are taking a break from their extra activities (except for AWANA :001_smile:).

 

That's my plan, anyways. We'll see how it goes.

 

My wish for you is that you find peace in whatever it is you decide to do. :001_smile:

Edited December 1, 2010 by King Alfred Academy

[Tracy]

Your kids are 5 and 3. Totally take off school for the next month. Wake up every morning and sing Christmas carols, read a Christmas-themed story, memorize the next verse of the Christmas story (or whatever you like), and do a craft. Write Christmas cards and color Christmas pages. Find little things they can make to give as gifts.

 

Soon enough the days will come when you're truly too busy with schoolwork to stop for fun. You're not there yet. We took off completely from Thanksgiving to Christmas for most of our early years, and it was WONDERFUL, the best thing ever. Do it and enjoy! You've earned it! The winter will be long, with plenty of time for academics. :)

:iagree: My kids are about the same ages. We are taking off from Thanksgiving to New Year's. We are reading a lot of books, doing a few crafts, and making a ton of Christmas cookies. We are having friends over to share lessons about Christmas. My kids are actually getting a little bored, because I haven't had a chance yet to actually get to the craft store to get everything we need. (Dd5 informed me that we need to do some math! LOL!)

[Guest]

Thank you all for the suggestions! I just put everything that I wanted to do on a calendar for December. I feel much more organized now. Looking forward to enjoying December!

[2_girls_mommy]

I incorporate it as much as possible. All art studies are on hold for December. We will do only Christmas crafts and make gifts this month. DD8's copywork will be Christmas related. DD6's regular handwriting practice book is put up so that she can do an enchanted learning one about snowmen. For music the girls are learning Jingle Bells on the piano and singing lots of Christmas Carols all day every day and performing in church's pageant.

 

Some crafts are in the extra hours, weekends, afternoons, scout meetings, and children's church, etc.

 

You can keep things simple by visiting your craft store and picking up wooden ornaments for them to paint. You can make paper chains with them for the tree (patterning, fine motor skills, counting...) and learn about reindeer for science. There is so much history to learn about Christmas. Just start picking up stacks of books from the library.