Get your Children Involved in Holiday Festivities!!

In the midst of the Holiday festivities, take the opportunity to encourage your child's development while participating in all of your favorite traditions.

While wrapping Christmas presents, point out the shape of the gift, "This box is square, look how big it is!" Make sure to notice the color of the wrapping paper and any shapes or patterns, "Look at the penguins skating on the wrapping paper!"

Wrapping Presents Together

When opening presents, ask your child questions about what they just opened, "Tell me about your new gift!" Encourage children to say thank-you and to spread the Christmas spirit.

What's Inside?

While decorating the tree, have your child wrap the tinsel. When they can't reach any higher on the tree, encourage them to say "help please" or "pick me up please" and help them finish wrapping the tinsel around the top of the tree.

Decorating the Tree

Bake and decorate cookies together. I decorated cookies with my CBRS children this week and the kids LOVED it!

Make different shapes, I made snowmen and gingerbread men. As your child, "Would you like to decorate the snowman or the gingerbread man?"

The children got to choose which color icing they wanted to use first, "Do you want red or green?"

"I want green"

Next came sprinkles! While some children decided to dump them all on the cookie at once, others put them on one-by-one.

One at a time

There are so many different opportunities to expand children's vocabulary and development during the Holiday season, take advantage of them!

We at Partners In Learning wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Katie Zink, ITFS/P