a handful of Christmas play

• For babies or toddlers, create a Christmas treasure basket.  I talked about the theory behind treasure baskets and the types of things that can go into the basket in this post  .  You could include: jingle bells, a drum, various christmas tree ornaments, tinsel, a snowglobe, a pinecone, a piece of pine branch.
• teach your children some Christmas carols.  My children especially like Jingle Bells (they can ring their bells during the song) and The Little Drummer Boy (they bang their drums).  There are even Christmas versions of nursery rhymes and fingerplays. 
• Gather some small boxes, giftwrap and stick-on bows and let your child do some gift wrapping.  Let them choose what to wrap (and probably unwrap) or have them wrap some of your Christmas gifts.

• I saw this Autumn dice game at My Montessori Journey and thought that it could be adapted to make a Christmas dice game.  I cut out a Christmas tree shape and used Christmas themed table scatters as decorations.  For each number on the dice, you add an ornament to your tree.  You need to roll a 6, to get the tree and a 1 to get a star for the top of your tree.
• set up some pretend play.  With all the letters being sent and delivered at this time of year it is a great time to set up a mailbox and encourage your child to play postman. There are also plenty of characters that your child could mimic in dressing up – Santa, the three kings, a shepherd, a toy soldier and so on.  You could even play a Who Am I? dressing up game.