Holidays with kids are notorious for their sugar highs and sugar lows – both are hard to avoid among the constant stream of candy canes and frosted cookies.
Whether you’re helping out as room mother at your child’s classroom holiday party or hosting a kid-friendly holiday party of your own this year, you can minimize the dreaded sugar melt down, sugar coma and sugar sweats by remembering to incorporate a few easy, healthy kid additions into your party planning.
1) Add Active Games to the Party. Consider having a party ‘intermission’ where parents or teachers can bundle kids up, take them outside to the school playground (or your front yard) and start a frosty game of Blob Tag so those little elves can run some of that sugar off. If outdoor games are not an option, add indoor games that can be set up in the school gym or the basement of your home. Great indoor games include (adapted) Marco Polo and scavenger hunts. (Read more at Five Ways to Keep Indoor Play Alive This Winter.) Need inspiration? Check out our extensive list of games for kids for more ideas.
2) Fuel Play Activities (and Your Party) With Healthy Foods. Guest blogger Carolyn Murphy recently gave us four tips for making Thanksgiving healthier for kids – adapt her tips to your winter holiday parties! We love her idea of including fruit and veggie platters instead of creamy dips – and really like her reminder that less sugar = less grumpiness. (in kids and moms!)
3) Consider Including Easy Kids Crafts. Crafty kids are busy kids – kids too busy making a holiday card or an ingenious gift for mom to be picking cookies off the table. MarthaStewart.com has an extensive library of kids craft ideas sure to keep your kids too busy to sugar load!
How will you and your kids wage a war on sugar at holiday parties this year?
Photo © Jasmin Merdan – Fotolia.com
