A (digital) letter to Santa

We haven't written our letter to Santa yet, so we thought we might use the powers of the Internet to speed things up a bit, as it is only 3 days to Christmas; who knows how long it would take for our postcard to reach the North Pole? There are many free websites that let children enter their wishlist online and send a reply for Santa. We sent two online letters to Santa today and had fun on those two websites with different digital activities.


North Pole
On this website, we had to create an account, but the user interface was very friendly, with hardly any adverts (all of them easy to ignore). The main page was Santa's secret village, from which a range of activities was available, such as listening to stories, songs, a crafts section, possibility to send e-cards, etc... There were games which were well suited to pre-schoolers, including a memory game which both Ju and Lilo enjoyed greatly. The stories we listened to involved reindeer and elves, and even though the story reader sounded a bit computer-generated, the boys enjoyed listening to the different stories.

The letter to Santa was well laid out for pre-schoolers, with a pictorial selection of toys to choose from for their wish list, as well as space to enter their own wish list. On top of Ju's wish list this year is a sprayer, which we hope Santa has in his workshop. Ju's special message to Santa was "Happy Birthday and Thank you". I think perhaps his understanding is that Jesus and Santa are the same person. This site allows parents to word their own letter from Santa in reply to their child's.

Screenshot from our letter to Santa on Northpole.com

A Letter 4 Santa
For this website, we didn't have to create an account, but the site was full of clickable adverts. The range of activities was more limited than the North Pole and not as well presented. The games sections was also aimed at older children, unfortunately for us. The sing along section was lovely, although we didn't know most of the songs on it. We couldn't watch anything in the movies section as they were restricted to US viewers. Ju really enjoyed the online colouring book.

The letter to Santa was decently laid out, and as a bonus, we got a well-worded reply straight away on screen. All in all, we preferred the North Pole website to A Letter 4 Santa, but the latter had the distinct advantage of allowing us to remain anonymous.

Screenshot from our letter to Santa on Aletter4santa.com

Sweet Christmas Singing

We are extremely lucky to live very locally to a charitable organisation that supports parents-to-be and families in early parenthood, the Pregnancy and Parents Centre in Edinburgh. They run a range of high quality classes for mums and dads-to-be and also for mums and babies up to school age. Having attended several of their classes in the past (ante-natal yoga, pregnancy singing, baby yoga, baby shia-tsu), we decided to give the new Saturday morning Baby and Toddler Music class a go today, as they were advertising a festive programme on Facebook. This way, we would be sure to address our remit of the day on our activity countdown garland, which was to learn a Christmas carol.

 After a few welcome and hello songs, Jackie, the class leader, sang several classics accompanied on her guitar, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Holy Night. Ju has been learning Christmas songs at nursery in preparation for the Christmas party next Wednesday, so he already knew a lot of the words, but enjoyed the session even more for it. There was a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Star, and a great finger rhyme about Christmas trees being all alone in the forest, then getting chopped and going to happy families.

There were lots of movement games as well, to allow the children to express their creativity. Ju and Lilo both enjoyed balancing bean bags on different body parts, swaying and twirling colourful scarves to make them into graceful snowflakes,as well as jumping and stomping their feet.

Lilo balances a bean bag on his head

Sound blocks, tamburins, maracas, bells and drums were made available for the children to bang, shake and play along.

Maracas, Sound blocks and Tamburins

Juju and Lilo both shook bells along to Jingle Bells and Ju sang most of the lyrics too. As I just found out from this site, Jingle Bells, one of the most famous Christmas songs, was originally written for Thanksgiving in 1857. This is definitely one of Ju's favourite songs at the moment, along with When Santa got Stuck up the Chimney.

Bells were jingled and claves (two wooden sticks) were banged together in time with the Sleigh Ride by Ferrante & Teicher.

After the 45 minute class, there was a bit of free play for the children, and a cup of tea and biscuit for the mums. All in all, the boys had a great time and we definitely will be back. And we're so glad we got to practice our Christmas singing.