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Do you send holiday cards? I haven’t even begged my kids to pose for a picture yet but it’s on my to do list. Normally I use Tiny Prints holiday cards and love them, this year I am thankful they have New Years Cards because that is a little more my timeline. What did fit into my schedule was whipping this writing center together for my daughter after school and it was a hit. She LOVED this. It was so simple, but it was exactly perfect for after a long day at school. Fun, meaningful writing, it doesn’t get much better than that!
Gather your materials. You will need some inexpensive holiday cards with envelopes we got ours at the dollar store 20 for $1, something fun to write with like markers, pencils and crayons, some washi tape, sticky labels for return addresses or for pretend stamps. We also added a basket for the outgoing mail which my daughter used as a delivery basket to hand deliver all her cards.
After putting the writing station together invite your child to play. It’s OK if they don’t play right away. Leave it out, grab your own cards and start writing yourself, that usually is the trick of you need one.
I was totally pleased that she was so into it.
She started by trying her best to read the inside of the cards,
drew pictures and wrote messages
stuffed and addressed envelopes,
And of course, decorated them with some tape.
I didn’t capture how happy she was delivering these cards to her family, but take my word for it, she was thrilled to share them with us, and we were thrilled to get these wonderful holiday cards from her.
Need another Christmas writing activity? Check out this Santa writing letter basket from Mom with A Lesson Plan!
Need a Book About Christmas to round out your activity? Check out this HUGE list of 75 Books About Christmas, I even include reviews of all 75.
Anne says
What a wonderful idea. I just have a quick question. Where did you buy the green tray?
Allison McDonald says
Walmart!
Corie says
Thank you so much for this idea! I got some cards at the dollar store and set up a box with markers and stickers for my 3.5 year old son. I wasn’t sure he’d be into it but randomly during the day he asks me to write my cards while he works on his. I was able to get about 25 cards written and addressed while he was doing his over the course of a couple of days. You saved me some precious sleep since I was able to accomplish this while he was happily creating 🙂 Great idea!