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Celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas with the fun activities below. I am the mother of a six-year-old girl, and we started creating and trying these ideas when she was three.
Find all the Twelve-Days symbols in a fun word search.
Place a Twelve Days symbol with your family when taking your annual Christmas photo. Start with the partridge the first year, and change the symbol each year to mark the passage of time
Make quick playing cards, each listing one of the Twelve-Days symbols. The first player draws a card and then acts out, without saying anything, the symbol on the card. The other players try to guess.
List of Twelve Days Symbols
| Day | Symbol | Day | Symbol |
| 1 | Partridge in a pear tree | 7 | Swans-a-swimming |
| 2 | Turtle doves | 8 | Maids-a-milking |
| 3 | French hens | 9 | Ladies dancing |
| 4 | Turtle doves | 10 | Lords-a-leaping |
| 5 | Golden rings | 11 | Pipers piping |
| 6 | Geese-a-laying | 12 | Drummers drumming |
Prepare yummy pear crisp to kick off your Twelve Days activities. I am going to try the two recipes below from the Raley's/Nob Hill grocery store website (always a great source for recipes). I will update this page with the results.
Take a nature walk or just go in your backyard to try to hear four different bird calls. When my daughter was three, she started drawing scribbles on the ground as signs for the birds to visit our backyard. In the silence of listening for birds, you will also find space for prayer.
Ask your child to draw five golden rings on the sidewalk or driveway. When my daughter was three, she loved to hop from one to the next in her own fifth day of Christmas path. Another fun game is tossing bean bags into a hula hoop ring on the ground.
Create beautiful swirls of color and learn about chemistry by experimenting with milk, food coloring, and dishwashing soap. When my daughter was four, the colors mesmerized her. She carefully recorded all of the colors she saw by trying to draw them.
Color Changing Milk Experiment
Play the Christmas carol, "The Little Drummer Boy," and let your child tap the beat on a toy drum or pots and pans. He or she can practice listening for the "pa ra pa pa pum" lines in the song. If you don't have the carol, you can find it easily on iTunes.
The Christian Origin of the Twelve Days of Christmas
This children's activity book features festive coloring pages, decoder worksheets, and other games. It focuses on the Christian meaning of each of the symbols.
The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Pop-up Celebration
This ornate and fantastic book will fascinate all ages of children. There is even a cutout that looks like a snow globe.
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Designed and written by Sherry Weaver Smith, last modified 11/2009.