12 Days of Christmas: Movie Edition! | Experience the Magic Behind the Film

Each year we do a 12 days of christmas tradition. If you were here last week, I gave you some ideas on themes, and if not there’s a link down below with our holiday homeschool schedule as well as the different ways we’ve done the 12 days of christmas in the past. Today we’re going to walk through what we’re doing this year with the 12 days of christmas movies.

First, if you’re new here welcome! I’m Tonya Johnson and I’m the founder of helping hearts ministries where we work with homeschool parents to put the fun back into homeschooling while focusing on keeping a biblical worldview.

If you are new to the 12 days of christmas, what we do is wrap up 12 themed gifts and usually open them the 12 days leading up to christmas. This year we’re spacing out the days a little bit because we have so many other things going on in December. These are the 12 movies we are doing, and in this order. Some of the movies have bigger items that we’re doing on the same day to go along with the movies, others don’t. You'll want to make sure you watch the corresponding video to see all of the activities we'll be doing along with each movie. 

In the gift box to go along with this movie I’m also including our elf. We do elf on the shelf, but a little unconventionally. Our elf is actually the grinch dressed as an elf, and because we’ve never taught that Santa is real, our elf doesn’t have any magical powers or report to Santa or anything. The elf is something we actually only started last year at my daughter’s request. She was 9 and knew a lot of her friends did the elf and liked the idea of making it do funny things each day. I wasn’t crazy about giving myself an extra job, so my compromise was that we could buy an elf if she wanted to take turns making him do funny things, so each night we take turns setting him up around the house for the other person to find. Turns out it was a huge hit! Check out the corresponding video to see all the cool things our elf did last year.

This year our elf is arriving in Christmas box #1 and will have a note telling Glori that 69 stars have been hidden all over the house. Her job is to find as many of them as she can before Christmas Day. The stars go perfectly with the title of the movie, “The Star”, so that’s what we’re doing for Christmas Movie Day #1. Everything we'll be using for the 12 days of Christmas is linked here in an Amazon cart.

We have a book and a game both to go along with this movie. There are actually several different games to go along with Buddy the Elf. We chose Card Scramble, but will prob buy one or two of the others next year.

I purposely chose an easy one for this night because it comes right before a very busy weekend. In this box the polar express book will be included as well as a hot chocolate bomb to enjoy during the movie.

This one is a classic! There are some grinch themed games and activities out there, but I was trying to do something a little different for each movie vs always doing a book and a game. Now, we are including a book in the box, but then we’re also including some Christmas bracelet materials, so we can make bracelets during the movie. I also planned this one for the beginning of the month, so she has plenty of time to make christmas bracelets for friends before the big day.

I found the perfect game to include in this one! The game is called Santa’s sleigh ride and focuses on delivering presents all over the country. All three of the movies that are including board games were planned early in the month because I want to have time to play the games several times before we pack them away for the season.

My daughter loves dogs and watches this movie every year, so while it’s not a classic, I decided to include it. We’re including a book in the box as well as supplies to paint some Christmas puppies. This is the tutorial we're using to paint the puppies. You could also make up some puppy chow to snack on during the movie… my daughter doesn’t like puppy chow, so we won’t be doing that.

Ok, so this is the only day where we’re watching more than one movie. All of the other movies that have sequels, we’ll watch the first one together, and then my daughter will be free to watch the sequels on her own any time she has down time. This specific series however, we will be watching all in the same day because we are going to be spending all day baking. This movie was strategically scheduled before a couple Christmas parties we’re hosting so that way we have people to eat all of those baked goods.

This is another newer Christmas movie that my daughter loves, and there’s not much themed round it yet. No books or games are out there, but Noelle is a very happy elf that loves doing all the fun things, so I decided to get creative with this one a put a rock painting kit in the box. We did rock painting about a year ago and my daughter absolutely loved it, so I’m sure she’s going to love painting some Christmas themed rocks this time around.

Again, not a classic, but my daughter loves this one. One of the big things this movie centers around is a snow globe give to the main actress by her deceased father, so we’re going to make some snow globes for this. In the box I’m going to include a couple mason jars and some christmas figurines. Here is a tutorial on how to make a super easy DIY snow globe with materials you probably already have at home.

This is another one planned the day before one of our busier weekends because the activity the goes along with it is really simple. In the movie Kevin talks about “eating junk”, so we’re having a themed dinner of junk to go along with our movie. We’ll be eating pizza, boxed Mac and cheese, coke, and ice cream. There is a book that goes with this movie, but the library doesn’t have it and it’s $30 on amazon, so I’m not including it. Because I think my daughter would find it funny, i’m literally going to wrap up a box of macaroni for this movie night along with printed “menu” card. The menu card is included in this free movie pack if you'd like it.

For this one I went a little outside of the box and got the Meme game, Disney edition. This isn’t a christmas themed game, so we’ll be able to use it all year round.

This movie came out last year, and we fell in love with it! There are several creative liberties taken between the movie and the true story of Jesus, but we choose to watch it as an entertaining movie knowing that it’s just that, entertainment. I made up a bingo sheet to go along with this one that’s also included in the free movie pack.

That’s it! I hope you enjoy these as much as we do! I appreciate you taking the time to watch this video, and I love to hear if you have any favorite Christmas movies that you and your family enjoy watching each year.

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