Soon after I completed an advent calendar craft for our 3 children, a reader told me that she had seen a great advent calendar idea using books somewhere online. A couple of days later, I happened upon this Christmas Book Advent Calendar on the blog MADE. I loved this idea about having one wrapped Christmas book to read each day as a way to get children excited about reading. However, since I had already made an advent calendar and we do not have 24 Christmas books, I modified the idea to create a fun Christmas activity for counting down the last 12 days of Christmas instead.
We had about 9 Christmas books in our home library, so I added 3 new ones to make a total of 12. One of the books we already owned was The Night Before Christmas, which will be reserved for reading on Christmas Eve. I wrapped all the books in one of two different wrapping papers, with the exception of that title, which was wrapped in a different paper to set it apart.
Starting on December 13th, one of the children will either choose a wrapped book out of the stack or reach into a bag and pull out a book blindly. I will let them choose which they would rather do. Then this book will be their bedtime story that night. The children will have to take turns choosing a book in rotation each night.
Some of the books in our Christmas book collection:
- Frosty the Snowman
- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
- 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas
- A Present for Santa Claus
- A Magical Christmas
- A Perfect Christmas (Barbie)
- Santa Visits the Big Blue House
- Merry Christmas Little Critter!
- Little Critter: Just a Snowman
- The Little Have a Merry Christmas
