Greetings, Learning Expressions Readers!
The holidays are here! With Christmas a mere 11 days away, I’m sure many of you are in frantic
holiday mode. The gifts! The decorations! The food! The in-laws! For everyone but your overjoyed six year old, the holidays can often feel just a tad stressful. In light of this, in this week’s blog post I’d like to focus on creating a (stress-free) family tradition that you and yours can enjoy together for years to come.
I generally put my own family’s holiday traditions in two categories: accidental and intentional. The intentional traditions were ones that my mom dreamt up in her ideal world and then forced her begrudging real-world offspring to participate in. This included taking us caroling at neighboring houses (a mortifying experience that neither we nor the neighbors appreciated) and, come Christmas morning, forcing us to enact the latest nativity pageant she had written. While all versions of “Mary’s Story” were usually popular with the aunts and uncles, it was the accidental traditions that we kids usually enjoyed best.
Not a Christmas went by, for example, without our massive Christmas tree falling over (much to our perverse delight) and spraying ornament shards all over the living room. Inevitably, we were still stepping on fragments of glass-blown Santas come June time. Secondly, there was usually some exciting variety of fire. Either the Christmas cake got left in the oven overnight and caught on fire in the wee hours, or the table cloth (and subsequently the table) caught alight, or the boiler blew up and—after covering all our gifts and household goods with a thick layer of soot—forced us to evacuate the house for the duration of Christmas. That was one sad, nativity-less year in the Blanchflower household.
Traditional holiday disasters are an inevitable and memorable part of the holiday season, but the best kind of traditions are ones that your children look forward to all year round and remember long after they’re grown. That’s why we’d like to introduce to you a Learning Express Toys holiday favorite: The Elf on the Shelf.
The Elf on the Shelf comes to your family in a box that contains a storybook and an elf. The first thing to do when your Elf on the Shelf kit arrives is get the storybook out and read it to your children. The book will help them understand how their new elf friend will become part of the family. Let’s take a look at a selection from the book, and see what Ellie, the Learning Express elf, has been up to these last couple of weeks!
"Have you ever wondered how Santa could know
if you’re naughty or nice each year as you grow?
For hundreds of years it’s been a big secret.
It now can be shared if you promise to keep it."
"At holiday time Santa sends me to you. I watch and report on all that you do. My job’s an assignment from Santa himself. I am his helper a friendly scout elf."
"Each night while you’re sleeping to Santa I’ll fly to the North Pole right through the dark sky. Of course Christmas magic helps me to be quick. I laugh with my friends and report to Saint Nick. I tell him if you have been good or been bad.The news of the day makes him happy or sad. A push or a shove I’ll report to the Boss, but small acts of kindness will not be a loss."
"I’ll be back at your home before you awake, and then you must find the new spot I will take. You’ll jump out of bed and come running to see: who’ll be the first to spy little old me?"
"There’s only one rule that you have to follow so I will come back and be here tomorrow: Please do not touch me. My magic might go and Santa won’t hear all I’ve seen or I know."
"The night before Christmas my job’s at an end. The rest of the year with Santa I’ll spend. So blow me a kiss and bid me farewell. I’ll fly away when I hear Santa’s bell!"
We hope you and your family have as much fun with your scout elf as we’ve had with Ellie at Learning Express Toys! We’ve all been on our best behavior here at the home office and have our fingers crossed that Ellie will give us a good report and put us on Santa’s nice list this year.
Talk to you again soon!
Kathryn
