Advent Series Day 10: The Christmas Party

Ahh one of my fave days! The little Christmas tea party. I’d invited 2 of our best friends families over from school – all a surprise. We’d done this last year so they all arrived ready for games in exactly the right spirit. Simple format, classic games, healthy tea, a small pressie under the tree. Super

Games:

• I did a Christmas Story wordsearch on an online generator.
• Giant Christmas Carol wordsearch on the black board. Again, I did it on a generator then copied the grid onto the wall and they took it in turns to fill in the answers. I sang a line of a well known carol or song and they had to fill in the missing word.
• Cracker games. This box of crackers I picked up in John Lewis sale for £2.50 was full of a game. This one was really god. They all got a character card. There was a dice, a series of challenges; pictionary, lists and talk on a topic and a score card. If I’d not planned anything else at all I’m sure this would have kept us entertained.
• I made headbands using card, a bit of wrapping paper and some bulldog clips. (I’ll keep these for next year – they are so simple but they just love this game.) I just wrote characters or people on bits of paper – either famous people they all would know, people we all know in real life or film or story book characters and each person who can’t see their own character on their head asks questions to the group to try to work out who they are. Its ALWAYS funny to have someone as their headteacher. My fave bit of this game is when they all squeal with laughter when I clip them on everyone.
• Christmas Bingo. We made a little Christmas picture bingo last year and this came out again.
• Charades. We didn’t get around to playing it this time but I intorduced them all to it last year and I think all the parents were fed up with having to play it eery night from then on!

Food: The party tea for health conscious mums.

• I did sneak a very mini pizza in, chopped into tiny bits.
• Pasta salad (wholeweat pasta with a tiny bit of melted butter through, sweetcorn, tuna, cucumber, carrot)
• Lots of veggie bits (I call them crunchies)
• Bread sticks
• A corn on the cob
• Lots of fruit to choose from
• Plain snowman shaped biscuits. I made these with 50% of the sugar the recipe states.

I didn’t do sweets, I didn’t spend long on puddings. They just don’t even care… too many games to play. I filled a big drinks dispenser with water and gave them each a milk bottle with a straw. Some drank more than a human needs just because they liked using the dispenser!

The pressies… these are families we have ‘no gift’ agreements with. Doing a little party bag- esque pressie means I’m not breaking the rule and means I can just find small and Christmassy items. My kids LOVE weaing Christmas jumpers, t shirts, santa hats in December… but if you save something like that to open on Christmas day you’ve kind of missed the boat. I loved these little socks (last pictures) and having 6 kids for the party meant I could take advantage of the 3 for 2 offers. Elijah has just sneaked out the door wearing his Santa socks for the second day in a row. He told me they went down really well at school… I told him I didn’t think they’d go down so well if everyone noticed them today as they’d also all know he’d worn them for a second day. He’s taking that risk. He said he might pretend he’d got a whole set. I’m glad he loves his socks…. and he only really has another 15 days to make the most of them.

Lovely time had by all in their Christmas jumpers and elf outfits 🙂