Last week we celebrated Saint Nicholas Day (December 6th). I thought I would share some of the ups and downs of our holiday adventure. Because believe me- while we did have fun during the day we had a lot of “blessings in disguises” (aka trials of patience).
I was super excited to celebrate Santa day with my Boo! I spent the day before combing through Pinterest and drooling all over the cute Santa crafts and treats. I picked some of my favorites, mingled in some learning stuff that I needed to work on with my daughter, and I proceeded to plan away! I jotted down a quick agenda of everything we were going to do.
Our first activity was to learn about Sinter Klaas (tying in some world geography and customs) and to leave out shoes on the night of December 5th for Santa to fill with treats or coins. However that night we made the mistake of turning on The Sound of Music (Carrie Underwood edition) and we couldn’t pull away (was it the anticipation/fear of someone messing up on live TV? Perhaps….) When the show was over my daughter was so exhausted that she told me she didn’t want to leave out her shoes- she just wanted to go to bed. But dang it I was so determined to include this activity in our day of learning that I found her shoes and set them by her door. No big deal- I just told her the next day that Rudy (our reindeer version of Elf on the Shelf) set them out. But Boo also was certain that Rudy was the one that put coins in her shoes instead of Santa.
Earlier that morning I blindly grabbed some coins from my dresser to put in her shoes. I thought I grabbed 2 quarters. Instead I accidentally took a gold dollar coin and didn’t realize it until after Boo looked in her shoes. Which probably sounds like no big deal EXCEPT we were going to have the gold dollars be a special thing that just the tooth fairy did. Yes I tried to sneak away the dollar and change it for a quarter. But my gal was well aware of my plan and insisted she keep her golden coin. Haha I ended up making up some story that Rudy must have somehow gotten one of the tooth fairy’s coins(reindeer do lose teeth too, right?) and wanted to give it to her. The things we do to keep the magic alive for our kids!!
Since my daughter had no school Friday, we enjoyed a late breakfast of Santa pancakes: these were super easy and perfect for the occasion. As a special treat I also let her watch a movie while we ate- Santa Claus is Coming to Town seemed like a good fit… but my daughter didn’t like it at all. She refuses to watch any movies with bad guys but will pretend to be a ferocious carnivore on a daily basis. Go figure.
I saw some cute ideas of playing Santa’s workshop either by making homemade gifts or wrapping presents but I somehow thought I would be clever and have my six year old help me try to fix our vacuum. While wearing Santa hats of course. After 2 hours of intense mechanical labor (aka pulling out gobs of hair and searching on our hands and knees for a dime sized vacuum wheel that mysteriously disappeared) we both decided to take a snack break. At this point I am thinking that our Santa Day has been disappointing (other than our cute pancakes). I messed up with the Sinter Klaas coins, watched a horrifying Santa Claus cartoon, and lost a vacuum wheel. Still, i was determined to follow my itinerary for the day. So we headed to the kitchen to make a Santa snack.
What could be more Santa-ish than a snack of homemade milk and cookies? Even if the cookies got burned, right? I am sure Santa has consumed plenty of overcooked cookies.
I made the executive decision to take a Santa break and go upstairs and play dinosaurs. We had fun and there was no mention of the old man in a red suit for a good hour.
Later in the day we did do some fun Santa stuff. We played a sight word game with words my daughter is working on in school, a super fun game called “Don’t Eat Santa”, and a money dice activity where my daughter “shopped” for Santa’s suit. I would recommend all three of these activities!
For dinner I decided I wanted to make a Santa hat pizza. I saw the idea on Pinterest from Family Fresh Meals and it seemed easy enough. And surprisingly- it was pretty simple! We bought homemade pizza crust and cut up string cheese instead of using fresh mozzarella- other than that we followed the recipe. And although the green pepper had gone moldy so we couldn’t use it- I would still call our dinner a success!
With our dinner we made Santa Punch. I modified the recipe a bit by adding strawberry kool-aid instead of lime, and Sprite instead of ginger ale. It was tasty! We watched Miracle on 34th Street- black and white version- and was totally expecting my daughter to get bored but she actually really enjoyed it.
After dinner I wanted my daughter to write an official Santa letter. One that I could keep in the scrapbook I will make for her one day. She has written quick little notes of what she wants for Christmas, but I thought this would be a great time to teach her proper letter writing skills. However Boo decided she was going to write to Mrs Claus instead and ask how her life was. I absolutely love this letter and how thoughtful my girl was to check up on Santa’s wife.
We read a few Santa books before bed. There are so many- but here are some of our favorites:
Guess Who’s Coming to Santa’s for Dinner? By Tomie de Paola
How Santa Really Works by Alan Snow
Presents for Santa by Harriet Ziefert
Priscilla and the Great Santa Search by Nathaniel Hobbie
Dora’s Starry Christmas by Christine Ricci
Despite the ups and downs of holiday planning- I really enjoy the magic of the season. We had a fun Santa day and now I am off to plan a more spiritual day learning about the Nativity and the true meaning of Christmas.
Happy Teaching!
