11 Things for the Week Between Christmas and New Year
Nobody names the week between Christmas and New Year, and that is the problem with it. School is shut. Half the family is working. The presents have been open for two days and the wrapping is still behind the sofa.
Day one and two look after themselves. Day three is when a child stands in the middle of the room and says there is nothing to do, surrounded by things there are to do.
Eleven things below for that week, sorted by the day they are needed.
Eleven things in four groups. Ratings are live Amazon ratings, never ours.
- 1
A large open ended building setBest if you only buy one thing - 2
A dinosaur build set for younger onesBest for three to five - 3
A thousand piece bars and blocks setBest for two children who build together - 4
A take apart dinosaur with a drillBest for the day three slump - 5
A tube and pipe set for toddlersBest for hands that need something to do - 6
A big pretend kitchen playsetBest for a long indoor afternoon - 7
Pretend play kitchen accessoriesBest top up for a kitchen they already have - 8
A magnetic day boardBest for giving the week a shape - 9
A rainbow countdown timerBest for ending screen time without a row - 10
A six pack of small timersBest for taking turns - 11
Ear defenders for a full houseBest for the child who needs the volume down
Group one
Days one and two, while the new things still work
The presents that carry this week are the ones with no ending. A puzzle gets finished. A board game gets played twice. A pile of parts gets rebuilt every afternoon for six days.
Open ended building sets are the reliable version of that. They also work across an age gap, which matters when a cousin turns up. The younger child sorts and stacks. The older one follows the pictures and then ignores them.
One practical note. Buy the set with the most pieces you can live with underfoot, and put a shallow box next to it on the first day. The sets that die early are the ones that end up spread across a room nobody is allowed to walk through.
Huaker STEM Building Toys for 3 4 5 6 7 8 Year Old Boys Girls
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For three to five, a themed set beats a plain one. A dinosaur they can build and then play with gives the pieces a job, and a small child who is handed loose parts with no story often just tips them out.
If there are two children who actually build together, the very large bars and blocks sets are worth the mess. There are enough parts that neither of them runs out, which removes about half of the arguments in an afternoon.
Group two
Day three, when the wall arrives
By the twenty eighth the new things are no longer new. This is the day the tablet does the whole afternoon unless something else is ready.
Take apart toys are our first choice here, because they are a different verb. Building is making. Taking apart is investigating, and a child who has run out of ideas often still wants to unscrew something.
For a toddler in the same room, tubes and pipes do the same job at a smaller scale. They connect, they come apart, and they are big enough that nothing disappears into a sofa.
Pretend play is the other reliable day three answer, and it lasts longer than any single toy. A kitchen playset turns an afternoon into a game with rules the children invent themselves, and it usually pulls in a sibling who was not interested five minutes earlier.
If there is already a play kitchen in the house, top it up instead of replacing it. A bag of new accessories in the middle of the week restarts something they had stopped noticing, for a fraction of the price.
Group three
The two things that give a shapeless week a shape
This is the part that actually fixes the week, and neither item is a toy. Children who have been on a school timetable for four months do badly with seven blank days. So do most adults.
A magnetic board on the fridge with three named blocks on it does more than any activity list. Morning thing, afternoon thing, film. They can see what is coming, so they stop asking, and you are not inventing the day at nine in the morning. It is the same idea as a school year routine, which we set out in the back to school routine.
The second thing is a timer. Screen time in this week is going to be higher than usual and that is fine. What causes the rows is the ending, not the amount. A visual countdown moves the ending from you to the clock.
With more than one child, small timers are worth having in a pack. Turns on the new thing, ten minutes each, no negotiation about whose go it is. We looked at how these work day to day in the visual timers that actually get used.
Group four
For the child who needs the volume down
A full house for a week is a lot. Relatives, television, a new toy that talks. Some children go quiet and disappear upstairs, and some get loud and then get told off for it.
Ear defenders are the least dramatic fix in this whole list. They let a child stay in the room instead of leaving it. If the whole season is too much rather than just the noise, the wider picture is in why Christmas tips some children over.
MelonArt Kids Ear Protection Ear Muffs Noise Cancelling Headphones
What we would skip this week
A big new toy bought on the twenty seventh. It is a sale week and the temptation is real. It also teaches a child that boredom is solved by buying, in the exact week they have just been given a room full of things.
Craft kits with a single outcome. One decoration, forty minutes of adult supervision, and it is done. The same money on open ended materials covers three afternoons instead of one.
A day trip on the twenty ninth. Everywhere is full, everyone is tired, and it usually ends in a car park argument. The last week of the year is a good week to stay near the house.
The honest caveat: we have not owned every set in this list, and open ended toys depend a lot on the child. Ratings are live Amazon ratings pulled from our product library rather than typed in by us.
One thing that costs nothing and works better than most of the list. Go outside once a day, even for twenty minutes, even when the weather is grim. The week falls apart indoors and it always has. The picture at the top of this page is a garden, not a day out, and that is the point of it.
More on the holidays at home
Questions parents ask
What can kids do at home during winter break?
Give the day three named blocks rather than a list of activities. A morning thing, an afternoon thing and a film works for most ages. Inside that, open ended building, pretend play and taking things apart last longer than anything with one outcome. One trip outside a day, however short, changes the mood of the whole house.
How much screen time is reasonable in the school holidays?
More than term time, and that is normal. The thing worth controlling is the ending rather than the total. Set a visual timer so the screen finishes on the clock instead of on your say so, and put one activity ready before it ends so there is somewhere to go next.
Why do children get so difficult between Christmas and New Year?
Because the structure has gone and the stimulation has not. They have come off four months of a fixed timetable straight into a week of late nights, sugar, visitors and no plan. The behaviour usually settles within a day of the routine coming back, which is the clue to what caused it.
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