The Twelve Days of Christmas
Twelve fun activities for your children and family over the holiday season.
These activities will naturally encourage your child to use and develop their understanding of a range of skills.
1. Cooking is great for developing a child's understanding of weight and capacity. It is also a scientific activity as children gain firsthand experience materials changing.
2. Design and make party hats for the family. You can make these fit perfectly by asking your child to measure the head circumference for each individuals. This activity uses not only art and design technology but also measuring skills.
3. Research the time zones around the world. You may wish to use either the twelve or the twenty four hour clock using analogue or digital clocks. If Santa is in New York at 01:00 what time will it be in London? If you wake up at 4 a.m will your Grandparents who live in California be wake if you Skype them?
4. Another activity that develops an understanding of capacity is to ask your child to create a one litre recipe for Reindeer Punch using at least 5 ingredients, either real or imaginary e.g. 33 ml of jet fuel, 476ml of carrot juice, etc. Encourage them to write down the recipe and the instructions of how to make the punch.
5. Use the lyrics to the song The Twelve Days of Christmas to answer questions such as how many presents we given over the whole twelve days? How many beaks are there in the complete song?
6. Draw a map of your local area and plot a route for delivering Christmas to friends and family.
7. Encourage your child to record the species and numbers of birds and animals that they see in their garden, presenting their findings in a bar graph. What can they find out about the creatures they see?
8. Go for a walk. Can you complete the alphabet challenge during the walk by finding something that begins with every letter of the alphabet?
9. Create a Christmas decoration or wreath by using recycled materials.
10. Develop sequencing skills using paper chains. For example, how many patterns can you make using 10 red paper chains and 10 green chains?
11. Play traditional board games and party games such as charades. Games are a great way of developing communication skills and strategies.
12. Try re- writing the words to The Twelve Days of Christmas to include family, friends and pets. For example: On the first day of Christmas my mother gave to me a biscuit and a cup of tea.