Letters To Santa And The Christmas Count Down

Each year my kids and I spend time together writing letters to Santa and making a calendar to count down until Christmas day. We’ve always enjoyed writing Santa letters and we have been creating the Christmas Count Down Calendars for the past four or five years.

We write our calendar on a large white poster board. Around the edges we make a frame in ribbon and glitter. The dividing lines on the calendar are made of Christmas candy sprinkles.

We mark special days during the holidays on the calendar. Every year we mark a day for writing letters to Santa. We make a mini envelope to glue to that day’s place on the calendar. On the envelope my daughter likes to draw a picture of snowmen. She fills in the space around the envelope with red glitter.

The day after letter writing is our mail your Christmas letters day. For this day we place a couple of stamps on the poster board. This year this drew up a clever little map of the trip from our house to the North Pole.

We mark a day for wrapping all the gifts we will be delivering to friends and family. On this day we put a stick on gift tag. Another event we mark is filling and sending out our Christmas cards.

We also mark a day for mixing up our magical reindeer food. That day is covered in gold glitter with a reindeer picture glued on top. This is one of kid’s favorite activities that we do for Christmas.

We have a day for baking cookies together. On the square for this day we glue on sprinkles and mini gingerbread men. We make the gingerbread men out of thin craft foam.

The day that we put up the Christmas lights has a green Christmas light bulb stuck to it. The light bulbs are made of candy cellophane. One year we glued on the lights from a burnt out string we was going to throw away.

We always mark the special day when the letters from Santa arrive. How this day gets noted varies from year to year. Last year we used a gold stick on star.

Of course Christmas Eve is marked with a picture of the real Santa. Christmas is marked with a big shiny present to represent a gift from Santa Claus. You could use any Christmas image that you have around.

To mark off a day we glue cotton balls over it. You can glue whatever you have around the house maybe strips of ribbon or tissue paper to mark off your days. I have the kids rotate turns to be the one to get to mark of a day.

My kids love making this calendar. It gives us a chance to spend time together doing something that we all enjoy doing. As we make the calendar we talk about past Christmas memories and their hopes for this Christmas. Every year we added other holiday events like school plays and holiday parties we will attend. I hope you have fun making this calendar with your children.