Christmas Party Every year our four families have a Christmas party. The decorations are easy because my house is already decorated for Christmas.  Because it is just before Christmas we now have a limit of $5 for each child per family for presents. We print out the name tags for the children but in place of the written name in the for and from we print out pictures.  This way the little ones who can not read can also help hand out the presents and see for themselves who gave them the present. Presents are distributed towards the end of the party. This party was for 7 children ranging in age from 3-6.  I created a mystery scenario and made the children elf detectives. I made detective licenses gave them detective notebooks and told them they needed to locate their reindeer to get Christmas presents.  They were going to need to collect the facts to build a fun place for the reindeer to come back to and sing a song the reindeer liked to get the reindeer to come.  I made detective licenses using some clip art and printable index cards by Avery.  Avery also has free software on their web site to to format and print on the index cards.  Because everyone needs an acronym I made them S.L.E.D. Santa's Lead Detective Elves from the Santa Detective Agency.  I put info like name, age, specialty (this caused some unhappiness because my son's specialty was deciphering and he thought it should have been singing, go figure). On the back, I wrote in point four the location of the notebooks, very tiny print.  I dressed my Mom up as Mrs. Claus got her the hat, pinafore apron and red and white striped socks online. She used a red skirt and shirt and black shoes. I had her tell the children that the reindeer were missing, they had gone out to play and had not yet returned.  They had the Christmas presents so the children needed to help locate them.   I then told them every time I said HO HO HO. They needed to come back to the family room and put their hands spread on top of their heads to make antlers.  I find this is a fun way to get the children to quiet down and listen to the next instructions.  I then told them that reindeer will not come to them if they are mean to each other or really loud. This worked great and I had no squabbling or competitive one upmanship especially to their younger siblings.  Mrs. Claus gave out their detective cards and magnifying glasses and they had to find their notebooks. They needed the magnifying glass to read the location I had written on the back in that point four font.  For the younger ones, I just printed a picture of where it was located, something easy for them to locate. I created detective notebooks also from index cards and printed out their names on the front of the book with additional pages for facts about reindeer.  The book had pages for where their reindeer lived (we decided they should learn some true facts): North America, Northern Europe, Asia; what song it liked best: Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell Rock, Dashing Through the Snow, Silent Night; favorite color:  Red, Green, Blue, Yellow; favorite weather: Snow, Blizzard, Sleet, Cold. I printed on regular printer paper a sheet for each of the different facts and then hung them down at their eye level throughout the house. I hung them up with poster tape and tried to cluster different facts together in different areas of the house so one child would not learn all the information by going to just one room. The children went on a scavenger hunt for the facts and then had to write the information they found down in their notebooks. I created two different sets of notebooks one for the older children with space to write in the information; the younger ones just had the information printed and all they had to do is check it off.  Next we went to do some crafts for the fun houses we were going to make.  I set up my dining room tables with some $1 crafts I found at Michaels.  They also wrote their name on a brown bag and decorated it to keep their crafts, notebooks, licenses, etc. I double layered my table with red tablecloth and had the craft set up and ready to go. I had three crafts:  gluing together foam soldiers (a little difficult for the younger ones), decorate a ornament ball with stickers (great), make a jingle bracelet to attract reindeer with jingle bells and pipe cleaners.  It was a big hit. After they were done, I just removed the top tablecloth and threw it away. Very fast clean up. The table was ready for lunch. The next page in the detective notebook was the reindeer positions in front of the sleigh.  To help them discover this I printed out a page for each of the reindeer and stuck them on with glue dots to some alphabet floor mats I have, placing them in the correct position on the ground. We then played musical reindeers. When the music stopped they had to write down the name of the reindeer they were standing on and put him in the correct position on the page.  They had to do it until they had stood on every reindeer. More than one child could be on the same reindeer. They enjoyed it. I kid you not I found all the information on Santa's reindeers including what they eat and their position pulling the sled online.   Then I got cheap wrapping paper, tape for each child, ribbon and bows had everyone bring child scissors.  We then decorated the parents.  Two of the moms got wrapped.  As a prize I gave each of the children a box that they would use later to decorate. We then left extra wrapping paper and bows in the room with their boxes. It was time for lunch. I made pasta with olive oil earlier and steamed broccoli.  Both can be made ahead. I also had parmesan cheese, fruit, chips and salsa,  For the parents I had a caterer make up finger sandwiches.  It was easy and everything was already set up. I got paper Christmas plates, napkins and red utensils.  Drinks were water, milk, or juice.  Dessert was assorted Christmas cookies, we even had some sugar cookies they could decorate themselves with icing and red and green M&M's. After lunch it was time to find out who your reindeer was. I printed a picture of a reindeer (Microsoft has a great free clipart site) I taped it to a large piece of  brown paper.  I got it from the end of a tube of wrapping paper. I printed index cards with all the reindeer names and stuck  them around the picture with poster tape. I then blindfolded the children and they had to pick the name of their reindeer. (We did not include Rudolph to prevent bloodshed).  They had to fill this in their notebooks. The last piece of information we needed was what reindeer eat. I had printed out the recipe on index cards and given them to Mrs. Claus.  The children were then told they needed to figure out where they could find this information. My son blurted it out Mrs. Claus so all the children went to her and got their cards.  Now it was time for them to decorate their boxes.  I had letter foam stickers and other holiday stickers I had gotten on sale at Michaels. These were a big hit.  Everyone put their reindeer names on the boxes. I wanted the children to use their creativity with the fun place to attract the reindeer and did not care what they used to decorate the box. They had a great time even the 3 and 4 year old boys stayed with it the whole time. We then moved them to the family room again and played a version of the a cake walk.  I had paddles created with numbers and graphics.  I call this the candy cane walk. I had foam mats spaced through out the room and they had to walk on them. When the music stopped they had to get on one of the mats.  This really did not matter but seemed to add to the enjoyment.  After everyone was on the mats I called a number.  At the dollar store I got elf hats and little stuffed reindeers.  Earlier I had put the reindeer names on each reindeer using ribbon and letter beads. I had all the numbers in a bag and gave each child an elf hat with a bell on it (dollar store).  They loved it.  After that it was time to sing a song.  I had a karaoke machine with a microphone.  The younger children were shy but I allowed them to sing alone or in groups and they worked it out.  In the end they were all huddled around the microphone singing together.  While they sang I put the correct reindeer in their boxes with a puzzle piece.  The puzzle was from a large 24 piece puzzle.  I just used 7 of them and used the edge.  This made it much simpler for them to assemble the puzzle.  I was at a party a week earlier where we gave them a full 24 piece puzzle to assemble and it was too difficult with a lot of children and the pressure to get it done.  On the back, I wrote the location of the presents and the other two reindeer (Rudolph and in our case Vixen).  After singing the songs they came and found their boxes with their reindeer in their boxes. Then they put together the puzzle and found the presents and reindeer.  I put them under the Christmas tree.  The children had a great time.  This kept them entertained for 3 hours. It may sound like a lot but it required very little prep work. The hardest part was deciding how to do the notebooks. I liked it because they got some writing and problem solving done. Plus I let them be creative with their own boxes and that worked out great.  I want to thank all the people who write into your site I have used it a lot and keep getting great ideas from it.