Holiday Family Fun In A Jar?

October 01, 2013

Amy Clark is a busy mother of two and shares ideas for family fun on her blog, MomAdvice.com. She is the go-to creative lady for easy ways that family members can connect with each other, homemaking solutions, family-friendly recipes and how to do all of that on a budget.

She started a special holiday tradition in her family called, “The Christmas Jar.” While her family uses it to celebrate Christmas, you can use this activity to honor whichever holiday you celebrate. The only supplies you need are a recycled jar, some paper, and a little creativity. Your jar can be festively decorated or just a simple ribbon with a bell, but what you do with the outside of the jar is far less important than what you do to fill your jar.

Tucked away inside our jar are tons of fun activities that we do as a family that lead up to Christmas morning. Written on little slips of paper, we draw one slip each morning and complete the task at hand. You can change the activities as your child ages and as their interests change or you could also number the tasks within your jar, if you want your activities to fall within a certain order.

Here are some of the activities her family has included in their Christmas Jar:

1. Watch a holiday show on television.

2. Drive around and check out the holiday lights in other neighborhoods.

3. Drink a mug of hot cocoa under your Christmas tree.

4. Open one gift early.

5. Bake cookies and take a plate to the firefighters. They may even give you a tour of the fire station and the engines!

6. Write a letter to Santa to leave on Christmas Eve.

7. Go outside and build a snowman.

8. Pop popcorn and play a board game together, while listening to holiday music.

9. Go to the theatre and see a holiday movie.

10. Go to the library and pick out holiday-themed books to read together.

11. Give the kids a bath while holiday music blares into the bathroom. See who can sing the loudest.

12. Get or make stocking stuffers for other family members.

13. Write a note to each member in the family to tell them how special they are and what you love about them. Leave them in their stockings.

14. Put together a box of items like canned food or books and take your child with you to donate them. Ask them if they would like to contribute something that they have outgrown.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to make really wonderful memories for your children. Ultimately, it’s more important to leave children a legacy of amazing memories than a legacy of stuff under the tree.