Christmas is coming! Is anyone else as excited as me? I LOVE Christmas! The songs, the trees, the lights, and giving gifts. But how does Christmas fit into a Reggio lifestyle, I hear you ask!

From invitations to play, to traditions, to gift ideas - I've got you covered!

Play Ideas

Instead of setting up elaborate play scapes and activities with an end product in mind, try some of these ideas!

Christmas Playdough

Make some plain white playdough (I personally love this recipe). Separate into 3 balls. in the middle of two of the balls, drop a whole lot of either red or green food dye. Add a scent like peppermint, a spice like cinnamon, or some sparkle like some biodegradable glitter. Carefully fold the playdough back over on itself so you can only see the white. When your child starts squishing the playdough, the colours and scents and glitters will start coming through! A fun way to provoke language around the process that's happening and to encourage fine motor skills as they excitedly squish and squash and tear and roll that playdough!

Christmas Ornaments

A fun but idea is to make your own ornaments. There are heaps of ways to do this. You can get polystyrene balls from places like Spotlight and Zart Art to decorate. You can use bamboo pulp fibre and water with some ornament wire. You can cut out star shapes from calico or linen, sew around the edges and stuff with leftover bits of fabric or cotton balls. Or you can slice oranges, dry them out on a low heat in the oven and use twine to hang them.

Small World

On our kitchen table in the lead up to Christmas, I like to set up a small world. It includes a waldorf celebration ring like this one, reindeers, gnomes, fairies, trees... anything you like really! You can add fake snow, clay, playdough - whatever you feel like! It's there from the 1st of December until Boxing Day, and can be played with whenever we like.

Traditions

Christmas Tree

Each year, one of my favourite things to do is to set up the tree. I try really hard to choose natural materials because I'm conscientious about the environment. I like to support small businesses like this one, where we get a lot of our wooden ornaments and Christmas box from. We love hanging up our home made ornaments and wrapping bunting around the tree. Being a Reggio home, our tree will never look like the magazines - and that's the way we love it! (P.S. this isn't our tree but is eerily similar to it!)

Baking

Using a really basic recipe for cookies, you can provide lots of add ins and let your child come up with their own cookie recipe! Try cinnamon, peppermint, cloves, dried ginger, chocolate chips, cherries, coconut, cranberries, pistachios, oats - even crushed up candy canes! Let your child smell, taste, touch and decide which combinations will work well together.