Taking Down Christmas With a Preschooler and Not Losing Your Sanity

Over the weekend we finally took down Christmas. Surprisingly our almost 4-year-old wanted to help. Like really wanted to help. Asking every few minutes if it was time to take down “hoho stuff”.

If you’ve ever tried to put up or take down Christmas decorations with a little one’s help – you know it can ultimately cause a lot more work, a headache and some serious frustration.

This year, we wanted to include Logan but didn’t want to extend the process any longer than it had to be (we did only have Quinn’s nap time to do it all).

Logan is not currently in preschool, so we are always looking for opportunities like this to help teach Logan new skills and concepts – like patience, being careful, following multistep directions and counting.

So, while I was in charge of the rest of the house, my husband and Logan focused on safely getting down all the ornament for our poor half-lit Christmas tree and wrapping them up.

🎄 We asked Logan to wait patiently around the tree for dad to take down a collection of ornaments and hand them to Logan.

🎄 We then asked Logan to walk carefully with each ornament and place them on the coffee table.

🎄 After a few groups of ornaments were down, dad asked Logan to hand him three of the same ornament (please hand me 3 gold reindeer)

🎄 Logan would count out loud as he handed his dad each ornament to be wrapped up

🎄 Dad then asked Logan, “how many gold reindeer was that?”

At first, Logan would repeat counting aloud to three. It wasn’t until the tree was halfway through that he understood the concept of “there were three gold reindeer” instead of counting through to get the answer!

When we started the process of removing Christmas and letting Logan join in, we did not have a teaching moment in mind. It came naturally. We were unaware that Logan did not fully understand how to answer with a number rather than counting through to get to that number. And we were even more pleasantly surprised when he started to understand it!

Teaching your little ones does not have to be overly formal, it doesn’t even have to be planned. It can happen effortlessly and during everyday tasks.