I was trying to figure out a fun way to countdown to Christmas this year and suddenly realized that the ABC's were a perfect way to do it! I wanted to post about this a few days early so if anyone else wants to join in you'd have time to get stuff ready.
Here is the idea:
1. We will decorate a letter each day with a Christmas word that goes with that letter.2. We will do a fun activity that is associated with that Christmas word.
To Do:
1. Cut out, draw, or buy letters in uppercase or lowercase. (I used red punch-out letters that I got at the dollar store a while ago.)
2. Glue or tape each of the letters on a piece of paper. (I used 4x6 card-stock. As we decorate each letter, I'm going to put them in a 4x6 photo album so we have an ABC Christmas book!)
3. Using colored paper, cut out pictures for each letter that your child can put together. (I used construction paper and paint samples because they are really vibrant colors.) For example, G is for Gingerbread (shown in picture above.) I cut out a gingerbread man and some things to put on him. LM will simply put the gingerbread man together and then glue him on the G! It definitely will save time and energy having these all ready to go!
4. Put each letter and it's picture pieces in a ziploc baggie. Organization = success! :)
5. Find a special place to put the letter for each day. I'm going to use the silver Christmas tin shown in the picture above. Each day LM will look in the tin and find the baggie with the letter for that day. You could also hide the baggie with the letter somewhere in your house and have your child hunt for it!
6. If you want, you can also do an activity associated with that Christmas word. We are going to have a variety of crafts, learning activities, games, and just fun stuff. All of which will be pretty simple.
Here is our list of Christmas ABC's. Feel free to change any words you'd like to use.
Check back as we countdown to see what activities we do with each word.
ABC's of Christmas:
A - Angel B - Bells
C - Candy Canes
D - Drums
E - Elf
F - Family
G - Gingerbread
H - Holly
I - Ice Skates
J - Jesus
K - Kindness
L - Lights
M - Mittens
N - Nativity
O - Ornament
P - Presents
Q - Quilt
R - Reindeer
S - Snowman
T - Tree
U - Unwrapping
V - Village
W - Winter
X - Xylophone
Y - Yummy
Z - Zzzzzzz.....
And since there are 25 days to Christmas and 26 letters in the Alphabet, you could either do 2 letters on one of the days, or start a day early, or do the day after Christmas too. Either way, it will be a fun way to celebrate and learn each day until Christmas.