In the United States, most people celebrate some form of Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Family traditions, such as reading the story of Christ’s birth from the Bible, decorating cookies, staying up until midnight to welcome the upcoming year or making resolutions, are part of the fun. But there are other activities you can do with your children beyond the holidays. Here are four fun winter activities you can do once a week with children ages four through nine throughout the months of December and January.

• Set aside a shelf to display art. Keep a tub full of scissors, glue, pipe cleaners, paint, crayons, markers, paper, recycling scraps on hand. Once a week, either issue an art challenge, such as create a forest scene, or allow children to design items from their imagination. When they are done, celebrate by replacing last week’s masterpiece on the shelf their newest artistic endeavor.
• Write a storybook together. First, make a booklet. This video link shows how to do make an 8-page booklet out of a single sheet of paper. Generate eight child-friendly sentences. Print one sentence on each page of a booklet. Then either draw pictures to illustrate the story or glue photographs on the pages. Add a cover with construction paper. By the end of the winter season, you child will have his own personalized mini library.
• Build a blanket fort. Equip it with pillows, tasty snacks, a flashlight, a Bluetooth device to play gentle instrumental music, and a stack of interesting books. Relax for an hour as you dive into a good story. Consider stocking some of the books written by our CCA authors, such as Michelle Medlock Adam’s I Love You Bigger Than the Sky, Gail Cartee’s Messages, Janice D. Green’s Jonah, the Fearful Prophet, Jeanne Dennis’ Bible Kidventures, or Clair Annette Noland’s Evie’s Field Day.  
• Cook! While there are many online sites dedicated to cooking with kids, I liked the Food Network’s idea for making adorable animal pancakes. Even a horrible chef like me could pull these off.

I hope you’ll try a few of these out. If you do, let me know which one was your favorite in the comments. And be sure to sign up to receive updates of each new post on our Christian Children’s Authors blog. Follow us for new book news, free resources, parenting tips, and encouragement.

Lori Z. Scott

Inside the Ten-Foot Line and Offsides –– two clean YA adventures for the teen in your life.

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