Activities for Children During the Holidays

Photo Credit: Martha Stewart

I have 4 weeks, yes 4 weeks of Christmas Holidays looming on the horizon as Lily breaks up from school next week.  Normally she’s in holiday club having lots of fun with the carers and her friends, but I’m only working 2 days now and it’s £45 a day, so she’s hanging out with Paul and I over the holidays this year.  She’s very, VERY disappointed

So being a good mummy I’ve scoped out the local bowling alley and they have a half price period in which to go and there is an ice rink opened in Cambridge for the holidays.  So that’s at least 4-5 days covered!  To cover the rest I’m scouring for ideas of things to do with her that are crafty, thrifty and fun and here’s what I’ve found.

Hot Chocolate Cones from A Simply Divine Christmas are just wonderful and will make lovely presents for cousins and friends.

I have some red felt material left over from Lily’s Christmas play outfit so I thought we could make some mini Christmas stockings for the hallway decorations, as she’s just getting into sewing.

My favourite thing from being a kid, making peppermint cream sweets – they rock!

Martha Stewart as always has some great things to do (seriously her staff must never sleep!).

youcanmakethis.com has some lovely projects and the instructions are easy to follow.

Salt Dough Tree Decorations Lily loves making these at holiday club so I thought we’d have a go at home, dough and glitter making a giant mess – what’s not to love?

And of course the most important thing to make over the holidays, A Gingerbread House!

Here’s a great recipe/instructions for a Gingerbread House, but I’m nowhere near that good at cooking or craft so I’m going to buy a kit from Tesco. Here’s the terrible effort from last year, we had lots of fun making it but it looked terrible.  At least it tasted pretty good

Gingerbread House Christmas 2007

If you have any ideas or tips, please post me a message – I’d love to read them!