Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

4 Frugal Ways to Keep Young Kids Busy During Christmas Vacation

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During a typical year, children get two weeks off school during Christmas break, often a week or so before Christmas and a week after.  However, if Christmas falls on a weekend, and if your school scheduled vacation as my son’s did, you will see kids who don’t get out of school for Christmas vacation until December 23rd.  That leaves them with almost two weeks of vacation AFTER Christmas itself, a time that is pretty low on excitement.  (It is so much easier to have a week off before the holiday because there are so many activities for the kids to enjoy.)  You could very likely end up with bored children, especially because all of the activities of Christmas are over just a few days into vacation.

However, there are plenty of frugal ways to keep the kids, especially your preschool and elementary school kids, entertained during the Christmas vacation.  Consider the following activities:

  1. Have a family play.  Take out the dress up box and let the kids come up with a play to perform for the family.  If your children are old enough, you can largely stay out of the picture and let them decide on a story, props, stage directions (even if the stage is just your living room).  Smaller children may need a bit more direction and assistance from parents.  If the kids are stuck for story ideas, they may want to act out what happens in one of their favorite stories.
  2. Check out your local library.  Our local library has plenty of activities for kids during the holiday including a movie viewing night, family story hour, and a Lego building activity.  In addition to activities, most kids will enjoy spending an hour or two at the library reading books and choosing books to check out to read at home.
  3. Visit a public museum.  Many museums put up special holiday displays such as holidays around the world and Christmas decorations throughout the years.  Most kids love all of the lights and decorations that go with the holiday, so take the time to visit your local museum and enjoy the display.  Afterwards, at night, take the time to drive around and view all of the colorful holiday lights and decorations on neighborhood houses.  If you have a house in your area that goes all out with the decorations, make sure to visit that one.
  4. Let kids stay up late.  My kids need their sleep and have an early bed time.  However, during the holidays, we relax the rules a bit and let them stay up later one or two nights a week.  Perhaps they can stay up to watch a favorite show that they normally can’t view because it is past their bedtime or you could play games with them.  Either way, they will be delighted to stay up later than they are usually allowed to.

There are simple things you can do to entertain your young children without spending a lot of money.  Employ some of these tactics, and you will hopefully avoid the common vacation chant, “Mom, I am bored!”

A Two-Step Approach to Preparing Kids for a Giving Holiday: Part Two

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The holiday season will soon be upon us.  If you find yourself stressed out every holiday season by financial and time demands, now is the time to decide that this year will be different.  Now is the time to decide on a giving holiday. Not only will you benefit, but your kids will as well.

Last time we talked about teaching your kids to give during the holidays, and this time we’ll talk about the second part of creating a giving approach to the holidays–teaching your child to have reasonable expectations for presents.

Years back, the holidays weren’t simply a time to get-get-get.  As a girl, I loved reading Little House on the Prairie, and I was always amazed by how delighted Laura was by the simple presents she received.  One year it was a tin cup and an orange.  Another year it was a corn cob doll.  Now, our kids receive oodles of presents and still demand more and are disappointed when the present opening is over.

Preparing kids for a giving holiday part 2How to Set Reasonable Expectations

If you’re the parent of older children and you previously gave them too many presents, you might sit down with them well before the holidays and let them know that they won’t be getting as much this year.  You can explain that you want to focus more on giving rather than receiving.  Plan on some resistance, but if you hold firm and continue to treat holidays this way, your kids will adapt.

If you’re children are younger, you can start the tradition of a simpler Christmas now.  Your kids may express some resentment as they age and see how much their peers are getting, but if it’s your family tradition, they will likely understand.

How Many Presents to Give

You and your significant other will need to decide what works best for your family.

Some families decide on a dollar limit per child and don’t go over that amount.  This is the way that my mom always handled Christmas for my brother and I, but she carried it a step further and made sure that we each got an equal number of gifts, too.

Other families say that Jesus received 3 gifts from the Wise Men, so they give their kids 3 gifts for Christmas.  Another take on this is to give your child 3 specific presents–something they want, something they need, and something they’ll wear.

In our family, we are blessed with grandparents and godparents that give our children many presents.  So, we buy our children very little for Christmas.  The one time we did buy our kids a lot of Christmas presents, they simply received too much.

Finally, some families take an extreme approach and don’t exchange presents at all.  Instead, they donate all the money they would have spent to charity.

If your children are already used to lavish holiday celebrations, scaling back may be difficult, but it’s not impossible.  First teaching children to be givers and then scaling back may help ease the transition for your child.

How do you determine how many presents to buy your child?  Do you worry about going overboard with gift giving?

Original photo credit: Theresa Thompson, on Flickr

A Two-Step Approach to Preparing Kids for a Giving Holiday: Part One

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While you may not want to think about it yet, the holidays are right around the corner.  The commercial machine is cranking into gear.  My local Costco already has rows upon rows of Christmas presents for kids and Christmas trees and wrapping paper. . .Soon, there will be endless Christmas ads on television for all the latest toys and electronics your kids will beg for.

Each year, Christmas seems to become more and more about spending money and over consuming.  If you’ve come to dread the holiday season and the gimmes that come with it, now is the time to plan a different type of holiday.  Now is the time to plan a giving holiday.  Make a plan now, before the holiday is in full swing.

You can take a two part approach to this.  Part one is to allow your children to have an opportunity to give.  Part two is to reduce your child’s expectations for the gifts they will receive at Christmas.

Preparing Kids for a Giving HolidayToday, we’ll be talking about part one.

Strategies to Allow Your Children to Give at Christmas

While it’s nice to get things for Christmas, giving is also nice.  Well before Christmas starts, sit down with your kids (if they are old enough) and discuss how you’d like to give of your time.  If they’re still young, say under 5, you can just start a new tradition of giving of yourselves during the holidays.  You’ll experience very little resistance from the little ones.

Put in time.  One way to give, especially if you’re on a tight budget, is to give of your time.  You could volunteer to work in a soup kitchen or to help assemble thanksgiving meal baskets at your local church.  You could go through your closets and donate excess clothes or other items.

Give your money.  If you have more money than time, you can give your money to help make the holidays better for another family.  You could pick a name from a giving tree that pops up in December.  (The post office often has one as does Whole Foods and other grocery stores.)  Take your child with you to buy a present for the child in need.

Or, you could donate to a charitable organization like World Vision.  Look through the catalog and either choose to sponsor a child or to make a one-time contribution.  Let your child know how the money will be used and help him to realize how much more he has than the family of the child who will be receiving the money.

Another organization, Samaritan’s Purse, has a giving project, Operation Christmas Child.  You fill a shoebox with simple toys and school materials for a needy child.  This is a nice project to do with your children, and you can give without spending a lot of money, if your money is tight.

If you want to get away from the consumer driven holiday season, know that you CAN have a different kind of holiday this year.  However, you’ll need to start now and take the first step–teaching your children the importance of giving at the holidays.  Next time we’ll talk about the next step, adjusting expectations.

What’s your favorite way to teach your kids the importance of giving during the holidays?

Original photo credit: Theresa Thompson, on Flickr