Christmas Eve is a long night for a sleigh, and in Australia it ends somewhere hot. Ready for a little reindeer training?
Inspired by the magical role of Elf Pets Reindeer in helping Santa’s sleigh soar, these five playful activities invite your family to practise Christmas Eve preparations together: Reindeer Route Training.
How Elf Pets Reindeer Help Santa
When Santa’s sleigh cannot lift off the ground, he calls on his Elf Pets Reindeer. Each one wears a magic heart charm that stores the Christmas spirit needed to make the sleigh soar. Children build that spirit simply by loving and looking after their reindeer.
That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth saying plainly to children: the charm fills up with kindness, wonder and joy – not with points. The Elf Pets Reindeer page tells the story in full.
So what is Route Training?
In the Elf Pets animated special , Santa’s test flights run into trouble and the Scout Elves™ step in to help. Route Training takes that idea and turns it into something to do at home: a short daily game where your reindeer practises for the big night while your family fills the heart charm.
It takes five minutes a day. There is no build, no set-up the night before, and nothing to buy beyond the reindeer itself.
Five training sessions for the summer countdown
The backyard flight path
Set three markers across the lawn, the hallway or the lounge room – thongs, cushions, whatever is handy. Children carry the reindeer along the route and count the seconds. Tomorrow, try to beat it.
The hot-weather water stop
Australia is the warm leg of the journey. Put out a small bowl of water and a shady spot for the reindeer to rest, and talk about why a rest stop matters on a hot night. It is a gentle way into looking after something.
The kindness lap
This is the one that matters. Each day, someone in the family does one small kind thing – a note for a sibling, helping with the washing up, a message to a grandparent – and then tells the reindeer about it. Kindness is what fills the charm.
Night-sky navigation
Step outside after dark. Pick a star, give it a name, and decide it is the one the reindeer steers by. Southern skies look nothing like the North Pole’s, which is half the fun of doing this from here.
The Christmas Eve dress rehearsal
On the last night of training, run the whole route from start to finish, then park the reindeer somewhere it can see the tree. The rehearsal is done. The rest is up to Santa.
Making it work in summer
A December activity here has to survive heat, late sunsets and a school year that finishes mid-month. Route Training is built for that: it moves indoors on a scorcher, it works just as well at seven in the evening as at seven in the morning, and it does not care whether the school holidays have started.
If you would like more low-effort ideas for the same stretch of December, thirty easy hiding places and our Aussie-inspired elf ideas are good companions.
Indoors or outdoors, morning or evening, school term or holidays: each activity is deliberately quick and flexible.
Keeping kindness at the centre
The reason this works is not the route. It is that children have a reason to do something thoughtful and then say it out loud. If a training session gets skipped, nothing breaks – the kindness lap is the only one worth keeping.
The same idea runs through the rest of the Elf Pets family: the Saint Bernard gathers Christmas cheer in its barrel, and the Arctic Fox helps make the Northern Lights. You can meet all three on the Elf Pets page or in our Aussie guide to choosing an Elf Pet .
The important bit: Route Training is meant to create small moments of kindness and Christmas anticipation. Missing a day does not undo anything.
Bring an Elf Pets Reindeer home
If your family does not have one yet, the Elf Pets: A Reindeer Tradition set at Santa’s Store includes the storybook and a reindeer, and the adoption centre finder shows where to look near you.