A Christmas play-box for festive imaginative play

When she discovered the Christmas play-box I'd put together, my daughter literally squealed with delight. She promised she would wait till tomorrow morning - she has even set her alarm-clock so she has time before school - but as you can see, she couldn't resist trying out a few of the goodies before bedtime.

 

Both my children love imaginative play, and while we have the props and costumes, toys and equipment for most scenarios (or approximations - enough to fire the imagination anyway), I thought they might enjoy their play a little more festive during the next few weeks.

Both my husband and I have acquired various props and Christmassy-stuff through our comedy and storytelling work; things that would otherwise simply languish in storage between shows, so it was easy-peasy to pull this little lot together. Of course you can make up a Christmas play-box with whatever you have to hand that's safe and suitable for the age of your children. In our box we have:

• ready-wrapped prop presents
• a selection of knitted stockings
• two sets of reindeer antlers
• a Santa hat, wig and glasses
• a few plastic baubles
• salt dough decorations (made by the children last Christmas)
• tinsel
• a few (very cheap) crackers
• extra cracker jokes
• a small artificial Christmas tree (slightly too big for the box)

My children love to rehearse and put on shows of favourite stories (especially when friends are round to play) - so I'm sure we'll have a dramatic reading or two, from our Christmas and winter books below, using the box's bounty of all things festive .

Or they may well just play Christmas. I'm not going to be able to resist being a fly-on-the-wall if they do; finding out what they really think goes on during this time of year might be quite amusing. I just hope it won't include any stressful shouting or tipsy tantrums.

Advent adventures: day 7

Today we opened the seventh drawer of our tabletop advent tree. Inside, my children found a tiny trinket to hang on one of its branches and a strip of paper upon which was written a fun and festive activity. There's one of these for every day of Advent - I know that for sure because I came up with the twenty-four ideas, lovingly wrote them out and carefully placed one in each of the tree's diminutive drawers. I'm going to attempt to take a photograph to represent each day's little Advent adventure and post them all here.

Day 7: Make a fancy door decoration using rosemary and ivy, baubles and sequins

Now he is Six

Preparations for our son's sixth birthday party began in earnest two days ago, but planning began way back in January with Buddy's Big Idea.

We had a meeting where we put all his party ideas down on paper. We were so impressed by his vision and enthusiasm that we decided to say yes to as many of his suggestions as we could - especially those which might be realised with little or no expenditure.

And so a couple of days ago we decorated our home with colourful paper, cheap sheeting fabric and whatever else we could find around the house to create a world for the guests at...

Buddy's Birthday Explorer Party.

The living room became the jungle with a cave under the table, and in this cave was a sleeping bear and a treasure box with lights (a very important detail, it had to have lights).

The hall was transformed into the savannah, the master bedroom a lions' den and the children's room became a mountain peak. Buddy and Daisy made the signs, including one for the loo.

When everyone arrived for the party (10 children in all) they each received a map and we began exploring.

First we followed a spider's web from the jungle up to the lions' den. Here we found a parcel which we had to pass around and unwrap layer by layer to get the next clue and to recover the lost jewels (actually marbles).

Our next clue led us to the mountain peak where each explorer had to hide one of the jewels in a vehicle they created from Lego. This kept them all busy and calm for at least twenty minutes.

The next clue set them off on safari; pictures of wild animals had been sticky-tacked all over the walls of the house. Nearly all the animals were found and collected - eventually.

Next we were back in the jungle with some loud music. Stickers were given out for explorers who gave us their best dance moves and for those who could keep as still as a statue when the music stopped. This wild game got us really close to the cave and to the treasure.

Then the birthday boy and Arnie (who had collected the most stickers) were chosen to go into the cave and turn on those lights...

Shhh...

Don't wake the bear

Yes, there's a treasure box in there!

Much scrabbling and screaming later the treasure box was brought out of the cave and dramatically opened. Finally everyone got some well deserved loot; toy snakes and tiaras, puzzles and sweets came tumbling out of the box and disappeared in a flash.

Then our very hungry explorers had lunch; bush tucker sandwiches, crocodiles - cucumber, bamboo - celery sticks, snakes - carrot curls, stick insects - Twiglets, grubs - mini bread-sticks, quick-sand - houmous, tropical fruit - pineapple, coconut and melon, beautiful butterflies - cupcakes, and a giant caterpillar - Buddy's birthday cake (thank you, Sainsbury's).

A game of sleeping lions and more wild dancing signalled the end of the party. Everyone left with with animal stickers, more Twiglets, a pouch of marbles and of course, a slice of caterpillar cake.

Phew.

We are really exhausted of course, but think our efforts to give Buddy a great party have been absolutely worth it. He has a post-party glow about him today and I love that he keeps telling everyone,

'Do you know? I'm now officially Six.'

That sounds like one satisfied customer to me.

Sugar and spice

This week I have been enjoying my last days of museum teaching until January. The Geffrye Museum is looking gorgeously festive and is heaving with visitors. They all want to see the best of Christmas past; its rooms adorned with the winter decorations of bygone Londoners. Despite the crowds, everyone seems to love it - my school groups included.

I haven't been able to take my two children this year, but that hasn't stopped us from trying out a few festive making and baking traditions from the olden days.

We made Victorian Christmas tree decorations - bonbon filled cornucopia - as pictured above. These were very simple to recreate: the children cut gold doilies in half and then we folded them into cone shapes. After securing with a piece of sticky tape we attached shiny ribbon so they would hang like little baskets from the branches of our tree. And then came the most popular part - filling the cones with fruit jellies and pastilles. Beautiful.

We stepped back another 300 years to the winter celebrations of Elizabethan England and tried our hand at making sweetmeats. Authentic recipes would have used vast amounts of sugar - a real luxury then - in almond paste, milk jelly and crystallised fruit. These delicacies were flavoured with spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Many sweetmeats were beautifully crafted into novelty shapes, and Marchpane was also popular. This looked rather like a flat marzipan cake, and was usually decorated with gold leaf.

Using marzipan for the base of our sweetmeats, we dusted our boards and rolling pins with snowy icing sugar and then had huge amounts of fun making our own novelty shaped celebratory treats.