Playgroup Christmas Nativity and Party

It's hard to believe Christmas is almost upon us - it seems to have come around so quickly this year!  I still have so much to do and the last few weeks have been filled with lots of Christmas activities and parties.  Today I thought I would share with you a little of our end of year Playgroup Christmas party.

 

We always end our final day for the year with a big party and gifts for everyone.  It is a much anticipated event and nobody stays away on that day!   

We had all the children dress up in costumes and they did a mini version of acting out the Christmas nativity play and sang some Christmas carols.  The children performed this for their parents and grandparents and also an older people's group which meets elsewhere in the church's buildings.  The whole thing only takes all of 10 minutes, if that, so perfect for the attention span of the little ones involved.

We gave out these delicious Christmas Tree cookie stacks as gifts to all those who came along to watch.  The older children had fun distributing these gifts which were very kindly made by one of our playgroup mums.

Each year I make up scrapbooks for each of the children which is full of their art & craft work and photos taken of the children at play and doing various activities throughout the year.  It is a lovely keepsake which everyone looks forward to having.

 

For gifts this year we used Gift Bags.  This is the most effective way of packaging up gifts we have done so far.  Each year we improve on the process slightly.  The bags were all hand-stamped and contained the children's scrapbooks plus their Christmas gifts.  It made the whole process of distributing gifts so much quicker and easier.  This photos doesn't show all the children, we have quite a large group and short attention spans, so we need a process that works quickly.  I think we will do this again.

This year all the mothers, grandmothers and carers who come along each week all received a lovely Nutri-Metics gift.  We always do something fun for the ladies, not usually this extravagant, sometimes smaller gifts or even a secret Santa which we all contribute to.  This year someone very kindly donated a whole lot of Nutri-Metics products for me to use as gifts for both of our Playgroups, which is over 50 ladies - so it was a lovely treat for everyone!

We ended our busy morning with a lovely morning tea - so much food that we had plenty of leftovers!  It was a great ending to a very fun year, shared with a fantastic group of people.  We have the best playgroup ever - of course I am completely biased - but the sense of community, support and friendship within this group is like nothing I have ever experienced elsewhere, and I have certainly been to my fair share of playgroups over the years with my own 4 children during their younger years. 

Thanks for sharing our Playgroup Christmas with me.  I will be back to share more of my recent activities soon.