On the first day of Christmas: Surviving the holidays without play group! #12daysofparenting

If you’ve visited from Candyfloss and Dreams, thank you!

I’m so excited to be taking part in #12daysofparenting. This is the first of 12 posts and as per the title it’s all about surviving the holidays without playgroup!

We have many prizes to giveaway during #12daysofparenting. Full details can be found on here.

My usual week consists of working on a Monday and Tuesday, which means my wonderful husband, Nigel, who also blogs, takes our girls to school.

Wednesday to Friday means that I get to take them! They’re only in school for a few hours which is great because it leaves us with plenty of time to do fun things and go to fun places!

Wednesday is always a good day because we get to go to our local play group. It’s on the same road that we live on so it’s not far at all for us to go.

We’ve been going to almost a year now and our girls love it, but guess what? I love it too!

It means I don’t have to think too hard about what to do to keep the girls entertained! Play group gives them the opportunity to get out of the house, have a change of scenery, play with new toys and socialise with other children their age. Of course they get to do that in school too, but at play group it also means I can chat to my mummy friends and actually drink a warm cup of tea!

It’s funny because our girls only started nursery back in September at yet during the October half term I felt a bit lost at having them home all day again. In the few short weeks that they’d been in nursery I’d really got used to being at home on my own in the morning and then having the girls for the afternoon.

To start with I did feel a little lost at how to entertain them, but by the end of the week we were back in our stride and then of course it was time for them to go back to nursery again! Typical!

This Christmas though I have some ideas of how to keep them entertained and that mainly consists of getting out of the house as often as we can on dry days, but also having some sort of activity or plan in mind if it’s a wet day.

Getting Outdoors


If it’s a dry day I plan to either take the girls to our local park for an hour or so. It’s free and the girls really do love running around the park, going on the slides, swings and climbing things!

There are actually lots of things you can do outdoors that are free. The park is just one example, but you could also:

• Go for a bike/scooter ride
• Go on walk, but let your children decide what direction to take/where to go
• Go on a bug hunt – This could be in your garden, a friend/relatives garden or in the park
• Find a bucket or box and collect things from your garden that could be used to make a picture such as sticks, dry leaves, petals etc