[YodaTheWrinkledO...]

So, DD1 is in her last year of daycare before she starts school next year. This week, she/we have received 3 xmas cards in our pigeon hole at daycare and a candy cane. I can figure out who gave DD1 one of the xmas card (the parent kindly wrote child's name on the inside, as we couldn't read what the child had written). However, I have no idea who gave the candy cane or the other 2 cards and the daycare staff aren't sure either. DD1 has no idea, just thinks it's great and now wants to give cards away as well ("to all my friends, all of them Mummy!").

So, to be honest, I hadn't actually thought about doing Xmas cards for kids at daycare. It just didn't register on my radar. So, here's my dilemma
(a) do nothing
(b) do xmas cards for ALL kids in her room (I think it's about 42 all up, spread over the week)
(c ) do xmas cards for a few of her closer friends, maybe 5 or 6 (hard to pin her down on who are her closer friends, I'm concerned we may miss someone).

And should we be giving candy canes away???

What have others done in similar situations?

Doubly concerned because if we do this for DD1, I can DD2 will want to do the same for the kids in her daycare room ....

This post has been edited by YodaTheWrinkledOne: 11/12/2012, 09:07 PM

[HezzaB]

Dd is not at daycare so I may be way off, but could you get your girls involved in something for the teachers and/or the whole room to share? E.g. Dear wombats room and [carers names], merry Christmas etc love dd. With canes or something to share around, maybe. Then its two card fir all the kids, no-one gets missed :-)

Just an idea... :-)

[YodaTheWrinkledO...]

Dd is not at daycare so I may be way off, but could you get your girls involved in something for the teachers and/or the whole room to share? E.g. Dear wombats room and [carers names], merry Christmas etc love dd. With canes or something to share around, maybe. Then its two card fir all the kids, no-one gets missed :-)

Just an idea... :-)

I did think of that, but my girls go 4 days/week and there is a change of kids (1 or 2 each day, but a big swap of kids after 2 days, about 1/3 change). Not sure how the carers would pull it off since the kids are spread over all days, unless I give enough candy canes for it to happen a couple of times. Hope that makes sense.

This post has been edited by YodaTheWrinkledOne: 11/12/2012, 09:08 PM

[Heather11]

My children give a card to everyone but this only starts in school because the people in the class are consistent.

They didn't give any out at preschool because there were up to 60 students at any given time and I felt that was too man. Like you said, at that age it can be hard to pin down exactly who their friends are and you don't want to leave anyone out. I felt it better that no one receive something rather than someone miss out.

[mombasa]

DD1 didn't ever hand out Christmas Cards at Preschool nor did we receive any, she did give her carer a gift and card though. This year DD1 is in Kindy so handed Christmas Cards out to everyone in both classes, small school so only 40 kids in total, not a huge deal and she wrote them all out and attached a candy cane to them herself, DD2 is at Preschool and decided that because DD1 was handing them out to her friends she wanted to as well so she gave them to about 5 kids I think that she regularly plays with, she also attached a candy cane, I'm not expecting any in return nor will it bother me or DD2 TBH. DD1 has a stack of them from her friends and DD2 hasn't asked once why she doesn't have one.

Unless you really want to hand them out I wouldn't bother, I don't think missing out on them at daycare/Preschool is a huge deal, big school is a whole other story though...

[livvie7586]

seeing as they can go in pigeon holes (and if it's like when DS was in daycare, the parents could put things in themselves), i would do some for your daughter's closest friends and leave it at that (if that's what she wanted to do). it isn't as if your DD will be running around handing them out herself, so there wouldn't be any hurt feelings if some kids didn't get something, and you aren't stuck writing them for everyone (either that, or don't do any. that would be my choice )

this is our first year of writing out one for everyone in the class, but DS is in kindy. DD 'wrote' out 6, her 3 friends from playgroup (we have a tiny playgroup), and the 3 younger siblings from school she plays with

[sophiasmum]

No, we don't do day care cards because it would mean me writing them & TBH I don't have time for it. My school kids can give cards if they want, but it's up to them to organise, so they can do as many or as few as they want. I prefer to give a little something in it, whether it's a chocolate or candy cane (although prefer choc) because a card on it's own seems boring & just gets chucked out surely. But this year, unless it's done on the weekend, seems like a miss.

[missjoads1234]

I agree with the PP. We dont "do" christmas cards here, not because we dont like to, but we just dont have time. When my kids are older and can organise it themselves more power to them, go for it. So for you OP, id either do a group card or none.

[JustBeige]

In daycare we only did their 'bestie' and their carers.

In Kindy we did the whole class (so no one missed out)

from about yr2 we have only done selected friends (plus candy cane). This seems to be the most common practise now.

[Jemstar]

I never did Christmas cards at daycare. At school age I let the kids decide for themselves how they want to approach it.