Are you a person who likes to celebrate? I was never much of a birthday person until I turned 40. For some reason, the passage of time started to hit me in a different way.
Ever since, I seemed to have developed a love for my birthday. Celebrating another year filled with the privilege of living. Yes please!
But I also like the idea of celebrating other smaller things – especially for kids.
A special dinner to mark the end of school or movie nights to close out the week (and to celebrate surviving the mayhem of parenting 2 little boys with endless amounts of energy!).
You get the idea, and very likely created these little moments of celebration in your own family life along the way.
Celebrations provide an opportunity to make a moment sticky. A moment your grandchild will never forget (especially if you take a screenshot or photo of it!).
So, whether it’s a milestone birthday or your grandchild just won the school running meet – you can usually find something in their life deserving of celebration.
And a very fun way to do this is to create a Celebration Station for Your Grandchild.
If you have been looking for a way to kick up a celebration a notch – or to bond individually with one grandchild – this, is it.
What is a Celebration Station?
A Celebration Station is a space you create dedicated to the person and event you are celebrating. You can use a bristol board, a wall or a door.
The great part about a Celebration Station is that there are 3 ways to use it:
- In-person
- On a video chat
- Mail materials in advance for the parents to add to your grandchild’s door (make sure to include a sign that says Love Nana if you do this though!).
You need the same types of things to create the station no matter what option you choose, but you will use them in slightly different ways for each one.
Let’s start with a few ideas to include for your Celebration Station:
- Balloons, streamers, cut-outs, or pictures they like, large sized stickers or signs.
- Fun facts about the child being celebrated (something like, you have been on earth for 2190 days)
- Would you Rather Questions. For little ones it can be ‘This or That’ instead.
- Jokes about birthdays or any other topic you are celebrating or things they love.
- Photos of them as babies
- I love celebrating you because… notes
The possibilities are endless in terms of what could be added to the station.
The key is to make it visually appealing, so it stands out whether in-person or on a video chat. And also, to make it very personal using photos of them, notes about them and topics they care about.
To make this as engaging as possible on a video chat, use colored envelopes, number them and stick them to the board/wall.
This way you can ask your grandchild ‘ Which number or colour of envelope should I open and read out?’.
In the photo above, you can see I used a Bristol board from the dollar store. But you could also just use a wall or a door in your home. Your grandchild just needs to be able to see it behind you. And it must look fun and colourful!
If you are doing this from a distance, send something in advance for them to open and use on the call. If you are celebrating an achievement in a sport, send along a baseball cap from their fave team for instance.
You could also send a few little loot bags for the family to open together with you on the video chat.
It doesn’t have to be much. In fact, a mini packet of smarties, a few stickers and a pen that writes in sparkly gold ink would be satisfying for almost any age – and thus for anyone in the family to receive.
(yes, teenagers and adults love stickers too!) There are video game stickers for Minecraft that they can use on water bottles or stick to their computers. Or cat stickers if your grandchild is obsessed with cats.
While birthdays are usually the main celebration we think of, you can create an excuse to celebrate just about anything.
Think about celebrating their efforts toward something, a goal achieved, or a milestone reached such as 100 days of school.
A few final thoughts about why a Celebration Station is a good idea:
- It provides an excuse to spend one- on-one time with a specific grandchild.
- It can be done from a distance or in-person if you are lucky enough to be with them on the day.
- It can be done as an in-person belated celebration of something you weren’t able to celebrate in-person together.
Your teenage grandchildren might roll their eyes in the moment, but they will love this and remember it always. Afterall, it’s hard to forget a personalized celebration station created in your honor!
