The K Junction: A at 21 months

Are you looking for simple, cheap, educational DIY activities for Christmas & New Year for kids? Then this is the right place where I am sharing 18 FREE Christmas & New Year themed Montessori inspired educational, art & craft & engaging activities for toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners & these can even be done by elder kids. I have touched upon various aspects of Christmas - Nativity Story, Christmas crafts, celebrations, music, carols, etc.

Christmas is round the corner. Kids are so excited about Christmas every year for the simple reason of lots of school holidays & gifts from Santa Claus. However there is so much more to Christmas, rather the actual reason for celebrating Christmas is something other than the Santa Claus :) It is the birth of Jesus Christ. And because I follow Montessori with my son at home & in the Montessori environment, we celebrate & explore different cultures equally, I went a little deeper into the Christmas celebrations & got to know about the Nativity Story, the birth story of Jesus Christ! I wonder why it took me more than 30 years of my life to know Jesus Christ’s story! Nevertheless, it is rightly said, a parent learns so much in this beautiful journey of nurturing the child.

It is important to rightly tell our kids the reason why we celebrate these big festivals. It helps to inculcate positivity & good values in them. And it is equally important to learn about various peripheral practices & celebrations of a particular festival. To celebrate the birth of Jesus, Christmas is marked by Christmas trees, Santa Claus, stars, lanterns, gingerbread, snowman, candy canes, jingle bells, wreaths, gifts, colors like red, green & white and lots of good food, music & much more.

So it is holiday & celebration time for kids now! And when BabyChakra approached me with this idea of collaboration, I was more than excited! We have had a great rapport till now, I have written a bunch of articles for BabyChakra already (You can find them HERE). I wanted to create some Christmas-themed activities for my son but was lazy enough to not kick start it :) But this collaboration idea was irresistable.

I will take you through an 18 days journey – one activity for kids every day, based on the Christmas & new year theme. These activities will be really simple but engaging & enriching. The goal is to have lots of fun, bonding and also focus on the key areas of skill development like fine motor skills, gross motor skills, practical life skills, logical reasoning, cognitive skills, maths, language building, sensorial exposure, understanding the culture and art & crafts. I will also guide you on what existing materials at home you can use easily for these activities, from where you can buy other supplies for the activities, how much time do you require to prepare the activity, how do you set up the activity, what skill areas a particular activity will focus upon, how you can tweak the activity based on your child’s age & skill set, lots of pictures & handful of links to follow more such stuff if you wish to and some books & music recommendations too! The activities will mostly by targeted to kids of age 1.5 to 4 years but you can easily tweak them to suit older kids as well.

So what are you waiting for?

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Do subscribe so that you do not miss any activities!

I have added the the links for every day’s activity in this post so that you can easily follow & check out the activities via this landing page, and probably use them for next year too!

I hope you guys are able to do these activities with your kids! Please do share the pics on our Facebook page or facebook group or Instagram or in the comments below & I would be glad if you can hashtag them with #18daysofchristmasness #thekjunction #babychakra. You could also share these blog posts among your friends/social media to spread the love & happiness of this holiday season :)

Day 1 - Christmas Tree Activity
Day 2 - Sorting Activity
Day 3 - Transferring Activity
Day 4 - Decoration Activity
Day 5 - DIY Puzzle
Day 6 - Matching Activity
Day 7 - Treasure Hunt
Day 8 - Gross Motor Activity
Day 9 - Practical Life Activity
Day 10 - Nativity Story Activity
Day 11 - Music Activity
Day 12 - DIY Blocks Puzzle
Day 13 - Jesus Manger Activity
Day 14 - Threading Activity
Day 15 - New Year Practical Life Activity
Day 16 - New Year Sensory Activity
Day 17 - Montessori Style New Year
Day 18 - Working In Kitchen With Your Toddler

And if you are short of time, this Christmas story & activity book is there for rescue. It is loaded with awesome activities, watch the video review here.

Happy Parenting & Merry Christmas :)

Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

A simple supermarket visit is also so enriching for a toddler! Provided we do not make him sit inside the trolley & just watch what we are doing. In fact toddlers are so mobile that they will not even sit in the trolley for more than few minutes. They need to explore every thing around them!

I am sharing here an account of our super market visit & how my 21 months old had a blast!

You can see how a child can learn so much while you shop! And guess what, no stress at all. The child will absolutely enjoy. The only thing you need here is your patience & time. Let your toddler explore the entire supermarket while may be your partner do the actual shopping separately ;)

Some Practical Life skills being learnt at the supermarket. That trolley is for him exclusively. He picked up lot of stuff in his trolley while we were shopping. We revised vegetable & fruit names & other grocery items, a great language building exercise. It was a sensorial experience too, to touch & feel them. For example, pineapple, he knew it's a pineapple but when I gave it in his hands, he realized it hurts! He opened the fridge & checked out cold items, chanting cold cold himself. He saw this weighing balance & termed it a swing. He took a cucumber to the balance & started giving that cucumber a swing ride. I told him it is a balance & showed him how the needle moves when you keep something in the tray. A quick cause & effect lesson & a pre math lesson. It was a great gross motor activity too, he roamed around with quite a heavy trolley towards the end all over the place.