Personal, social, and emotional

Why not challenge yourselves as a family to carry out 24 acts of kindness each day leading up to Christmas? These random acts of kindness can be anything from reading a book to sibling, helping family with their groceries or laundry, or sharing toys with friends at nursery. It’s a great way to count down to the big day while also promoting key skills such as establishing autonomy, sense of self and responsibility!

Bonus: if your child is showing an interest in numbers, try counting down the days until you reach 25. Your child may learn some brand new numbers beyond 10, and they may even test their addition skills by guessing which number comes next.  

Communication and language

Christmas is full of things that are sparkly and noisy, and these items make for wonderful sensory play objects. Try adding some Christmas materials to a bag, such as tinsel, bells or baubles, and challenge your child to rummage around in the bag and tell you what they can hear and feel. There will be lots of opportunity here to model language introduce new describing words to your child. If your child is under two, a simple sensory tray full of Christmas things for them to explore will do the trick!

Physical development

Do you want to build a snowman? If we’re lucky enough to have snow this Christmas, building a snowman is a fun way to develop your child’s physical development skills. Rolling giant snowballs can help them build up their core strength, and if you’re feeling brave you can try a snowball fight to increase hand-eye co-ordination!

Bonus: Help your child to understand different parts of the body by asking what features your snowman might need. You can use this opportunity to gently explain that people can sometimes look different to others and might have different features!