Such a lovely idea and the kids adored it.
Children can often be bombarded with presents at Christmas time. While people always mean well, toys, games and clothes can rapidly accrue and there’s often no space left for things except the attic.
In particular, most grandparents love to spoil their grandchildren but quality time is always more rewarding than material goods.
Last Christmas one American granny, Darlene Waller, who has four grandchildren, gave her two oldest something unexpected. Instead of a generic toy, she created an activity box for her 11-year-old and nine-year-old grandkids to unwrap.
She made 12 envelopes for her two grandchildren to open, each labelled with a month of the year. The envelopes contained a pre-paid for activity for the children to do with her, or their aunt and uncle or their parents.
In the letter explaining the activity box she explained:
“Some you choose, some I choose. But they are all fun as a family activity for us to do together.”
She told the kids that she was giving them “the gift of time”.
The activities included things like a trip to a riding stables, cinema tickets and bowling vouchers.
And the grandmother is documenting the twelve activities. She told Café Mom:
“The boys loved it and the parents loved it too because they didn’t need more toys. They live on a budget so it was nice for them to be able to take the boys to the movies or bowling when they opened that envelope. I took pictures every time we did one of the adventures, and I’m making a scrapbook for them to give to them this year.”
We can definitely see ourselves re-creating this one – it’s such a lovely idea!
