Decorating the house for Christmas with your kids can be a fun family activity. Kids are often bursting with raw creativity. While their suggestions may not always be the most practical, you can guide them in a direction that leads to a festive house everyone enjoys.
It’s also the perfect way to help develop their team-building skills. Encouraging a child’s sense of intrinsic motivation rather than using control or bribery is often more enriching. This means stimulating their natural curiosity and leaving them with some scope to be creative. Here are a few ways you can do that.
Let them pick the theme
Your décor theme ties the whole house together. Talk to your children about why you want to stick to a specific colour scheme and suggest a few ideas so that they can choose their favourite. If you have several kids, this might be a good time to introduce a voting process, teaching them how to make decisions fairly.
The green, red and gold theme is a classic. You might also be open to bright jewel tones, muted natural colours or even a colder combination of blue, white and gold. Whatever you have in mind, involving the children is a lovely way to teach them skills in creativity, fairness and decision-making.
Give them their own tree
If you’ve already tried to involve your kids in the Christmas tree decorating and it seems to just be chaos, fear not! There’s a diplomatic solution.
If there’s space in the house, surprise them with a smaller Christmas tree all of their own. Choose a space somewhere in the house that isn’t your main living area and let them put whatever decorations they like on it. This way, everyone’s happy.
Teach them traditions
If there’s a certain way your family has always decorated for Christmas, pass this on to your kids and help foster a tight-knit family bond.
Perhaps hanging festive outdoor Christmas lights in the garden is something your family has enjoyed for decades. Show your children and ask them where they think they should be placed. And maybe there’s a certain type of wreath you have always hung on the door. It could even be some stockings that have been passed down through generations.
Feel free to start some new traditions, too! Decorating a gingerbread house together is an activity that never gets old. It’s fun for kids and adults alike and can boost hand-eye coordination.
Make new decorations
Stimulate their natural creativity by making some decorations together. Show how to repurpose basic household objects by turning buncases into small green Christmas trees with sequins.
Or keep it traditional but fun with salt dough ornaments cut into classic Christmas shapes like stockings and snowflakes.
It’s not usually too hard to convince kids to be part of the Christmas preparations. But there are always tactics to make it more fun and educational!
