Looking for ways to inspire your child's imagination and home language use during the winter break? Get help from an elf!
In this blog post, we hear from Jana Aguilar Marquez and Michaela Martínez Pauker about a truly fun and creative way to stimulate home language use around the holiday time. These educators run a Czech heritage language project "Pinčlata" in Germany and have some great tips for parents home with the children over the winter break. They describe celebrating Christmas and work with children who are developing the Czech language, but the idea of getting a magical helper to spawn exciting conversations with your children can also be adapted to other contexts and languages. Many thanks to Jana and Michaela for this fantastic contribution!
You may have noticed that in recent years, a new mysterious item has appeared in stores before Christmas: tiny elf doors. They usually hang discreetly among all the artificial garlands, sometimes accompanied by miniature brooms and buckets, skis, and rolling pins. These are accessories for Christmas elves, who have started making their way to us in recent years from both the North and the West. Today, there are essentially two widely known Christmas traditions involving elves: the Scandinavian one and the American one.
In Scandinavia, elves have been part of Christmas for centuries. This custom evolved in connection with ancient pagan religions and old folk tales and remains hugely popular among both children and adults. Its modern form revolves around mysterious doors that suddenly appear in your wall at the beginning of December. A letter placed nearby explains that a new tenant—the Christmas elf—has moved in for Advent to help you celebrate Christmas. The elf never shows up during the stay—because it sleeps during the day and must not be disturbed. At night, however, it is busy and never leaves the scene without a trace. Sometimes it “improves” your Christmas decorations, sometimes it nibbles on the prepared cookies… Other times it bakes and leaves chaos in the kitchen. The rule is that every morning, children find evidence of the elf’s nighttime activity near the little door (or elsewhere in the house), usually accompanied by a short message, a task, or even a small gift.
The American elf, on the other hand, appears daily and with great fanfare. It became popular only in 2005, when the book The Elf on the Shelf (Carol A. Aebersold and Chanda A. Bell) was published—a short, rhymed story about an elf who joins its adoptive family in December. Its job is to watch the children’s behavior during the day and then fly beyond the Arctic Circle at night to report to Santa. To keep a reliable overview of what’s happening in the house, it changes its vantage point every day. One day it sits on the living room cabinet, the next day in the bathroom on a pyramid of toilet paper, and the third day it hides in the shoe rack—you never know where the elf’s curious eye will watch you from next.
Both traditions have their pros and cons, which we could debate endlessly. The Scandinavian elf, for example, leaves more room for imagination, while the American one is easier for younger children to grasp thanks to its simpler framework. But they share one thing: kids love them. Almost all children wake up excited, running around the house to see what the elves did overnight.
But did you know that this Christmas elf tradition is perfect for supporting language acquisition and multilingual education?
The Christmas elf can be seen as a more elaborate alternative to the advent calendar. It works on a similar principle—the child looks forward to (almost) daily surprises from December 1 until Christmas Eve. Unlike an advent calendar, however, they don’t open windows with chocolates or toys but read the elf’s messages, which entertain, surprise, bring new impulses into everyday life, or respond to current family situations. Yes, hosting a Christmas elf requires more time and energy from parents than a supermarket advent calendar. But once you start, you’ll soon discover many benefits:
- You avoid encouraging consumerist behavior in your children.
- You strengthen emotional bonds between you and your children.
- You develop your children’s imagination.
- You support vocabulary growth and a positive attitude toward language.
- You gain a new channel to introduce knowledge on almost any topic in a playful way—such as customs of the country whose language the child inherits or is living in.
You can creatively adapt the elf’s activities to your needs. Is there something your child is especially interested in? Or something they need more motivation for? The elf is happy to help!
Your son loves cars, but you’d like him to practice fine motor skills? No problem! Let the elf write a letter saying that on Christmas Eve, it helps deliver gifts and needs a car—decorated for Christmas, of course. Then it’s up to you how to handle this tricky situation. Maybe you have a toy car in the room that you can decorate with ribbons and lend to the elf for a day? Or perhaps you’ll find old boxes and build a brand-new limousine? What would the perfect Christmas car for lots of gifts look like? You can color, cut, glue… Before you know it, you’ll have a project that keeps kids busy for days. Imagination truly knows no bounds—for children and parents alike.
You can also focus on vocabulary exercises or language games like rhyming. Here are some examples of how the elf can be used daily to reinforce language skills naturally, even outside targeted tasks:
- Using prepositions: Children find the elf’s message every day. Be creative with its placement. It’s often near the elf door, but you don’t have to stick to that. Let kids search for the notes and then describe the exact location: Is it next to the door? In front of it? Above it? Partly tucked into a book? Carelessly left by a chair? Encourage them to report back.
- Narrative skills and past tense: Traces of the elf’s nighttime escapades prompt children to reconstruct what happened while they slept. This exercises imagination and storytelling skills, as well as grammar for past events. Ask questions: How did such a tiny elf climb to the highest kitchen shelf for flour? Where did it get crayons for drawing? And where did it go shopping so late at night?
- Expanding vocabulary: Focus on verbs and adjectives. Each day, describe the elf’s activities and summarise its latest adventure with a fitting adjective: “That was brave of it to climb such a tall cabinet!” Or: “The elf was cheeky today, don’t you think?” Next time: “I’d never have guessed the elf could be so kindhearted!” Use a rich vocabulary—kids will quickly absorb words in these memorable, unusual contexts.
- Formulating thoughts and future hypotheses: What do children think the elf will do next night? These conversations boost imagination and help practice expressing ideas and using future tense.
Remember: Young children don’t learn their native language only from textbooks or lessons. They also need to learn through everyday life—from people they have strong emotional bonds with and in environments full of stimuli. The Christmas elf offers a wide range of such stimuli, and your family can decide which ones work best for you.
Image source: https://pinclata.com/