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For All Single Parents - Seven Things
You Can Do With Your Chidren Seven Days Before Christmas
by Will Barnes
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Christmas time should be a time
for family fun and enjoyment. Let it be a time for you as a single
parent and your children to draw even closer together as a family
by engaging in activities that require planning, cooperation,
and shared responsibilities.
Here are seven things
that you and your children can do seven days before Christmas. Feel free to choose the order in which
these things are done.
1. Make the house or apartment
beautiful. Let the children decorate their room(s) using extra
family decorations and ribbons. If they wish, let them hang their
empty Christmas stockings on their room doors. The eating table,
the front door, and the top of the cabinet all deserve festive
touches. Talk with the family about buying one new decoration
each year. What would it be? Where would it go? If you have time,
go get it this very night.
2. Take the children to the
library and look at books about Christmas. Check some out to
read together aloud at supper. Start reading a few pages each
night. |
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3. Have everyone become a Christmas
angel. Put everyone's name in a bowl on the supper table. Each
draws a name and then do a good deed in secret for that person
between now and Christmas Eve. Don't let anyone tell whose name
they drew. Let everyone guess their angel. Also look in the newspaper
and check out all the special activities for Christmas. Together
choose a concert or special event that everyone would enjoy and
put it on the calendar.
4. Choose a nostalgia night.
Bring out all the scrapbooks, photo albums, slides, and movies.
If grandparents are nearby, let them enjoy this backward look.
Talk about Christmas when you were a child.
5. Select a quiet day. Talk
about the meaning of Christmas, the coming of the Christ child,
and his message of love. At night, bundle up in warm clothes,
go out into the backyard or to a park and look at the stars.
Talk about the Star of Bethlehem.
6. There is always a special
Christmas movie playing at a nearby theater to go to. Or, get
a Christmas DVD. There are some great movie classics available.
Afterwards, make sundaes.
7. At supper, make a list of
all the relatives, senior citizens, and friends who would enjoy
a Christmas call. Let each child think of one or two things he
or she could share on the phone. Then let them make those telephone
calls and save the calling list for next year.
Allow this be a joyful and pleasant
time of the year. |
