Do you have Christmas books that your children enjoy reading at Christmas? Do you sometimes run out of time to read them and pack them away for the following year unread? Do your kids enjoy opening presents? {OK, silly question!}
We have lots of Christmas books that my kids enjoy reading together, but sometimes those books get overshadowed by all the other activities at Christmas. I always felt sad packing away the unread ones, but I never want to give them away because I'm determined to make sure that "next Christmas we'll make time to read them!"
I knew I needed to organize a way to ensure that we actually made that time. Here's what I did last year to solve this problem and we enjoyed every single one of our Christmas books!
I wrapped up each of our children's Christmas books and put them all in a basket. Each night before bed the kids chose one book to unwrap and read together.
My daughter loved it! She had so much fun opening a "present" each night. It was surprise every evening which book it would be and it made reading a lot of fun.
My son joined in for some of the books, but was getting a bit old for a few of them so he read other books instead. We gave away a few of the more childish books after Christmas last year and I'm planning to add a few new ones this year that they'll both enjoy.
Wow, she's grown a lot in a last year!
I kept the basket of books at the end of the hallway between the kids' bedroom doors. That made it convenient for bedtime reading. Once a book was read, it was put back in the basket and was available to be read any other time.
As the month progressed, it was easy to see how much closer we were getting to Christmas by how many books were opened and how many remained wrapped. It was a fun way to anticipate Christmas together.
By the way, I didn't come up with this idea... I read about it in a few places online last year and loved the idea as soon as I saw it!
It was worth the time spent wrapping the books, and the expense of the paper (I just used cheap stuff) to be able to have the time together reading Christmas books.
I know I could have just put the books in a basket without wrapping them, but then I know the favourite books would be chosen first and the books left over as the month went on wouldn't seem as exciting. I didn't want my kids to lose interest in reading these Christmas books, and wrapping them made it a fun little mystery every night.
These are the 24 books we used in no particular order (affiliate links):
- The Legend of the Candy Cane
- A Porcupine in a Pine Tree
- The Christmas Story
- Here Comes Santa Claus
- The Berenstain Bears Save Christmas
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Classic Seuss)
- Merry Christmas, Strega Nona
- First Christmas (big board book)
- The Christmas Troll: Sometimes God's Best Gifts Are the Most Unexpected (Experiencing God)
- Elf: A Short Story of a Tall Tale
- A Charlie Brown Christmas
- The Care and Feeding of a Grinch (Pictureback(R))
- A Christmas Carol (book w/cassette)
- The Care Bears' Night Before Christmas
- Away in a Manger (Happy Day)
- The Story of Christmas (Happy Day)
- The Christmas Penguin (Scholastic Reader, Level 1)
- The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Christmas Carol (Little Golden Book, Number 526)
- The Story of the Night Before Christmas (Clement C. Moore)
- The Christmas Magic
- The friendly beasts: A Christmas carol
- Merry Christmas, Curious George
- The Merry Christmas Mystery (Disney's Winnie the Pooh / Golden Look-Look Book)
- Merry Christmas Mom and Dad (A Golden Look-Look Book)
There are so many great Christmas books out there! If you don't own 24 of them, you could borrow some from your local library and number the books you wrap so you can read and return them before they're due.
For older children, you can use chapter books and read a chapter a night. {That would mean fewer books which would be less wrapping!}
Do you remember the book The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
? I think the first time I ever heard it was around grade 3 when my teacher read it to our class at school. My kids are in grades 2 and 4 now and love funny books so I think they'll really get a kick out of it. I'll definitely be including it this year.I hope this post inspires you to read Christmas books with your kids this year! Whether you wrap them up like this or not, Christmas is a great time to read together.
How have you used organizing to solve a problem? Have you ever wrapped books to read through advent? What are your favourite Christmas books?
Happy organizing!
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