This is a fun Christmas tradition for a creative advent calendar I’ve been sharing with my family for several years. It’s an inexpensive way to share a love of books with my kids while they have fun opening up one new book every day until Christmas to help us countdown the holiday!
25 Storybook Surprises to Countdown Christmas
Instructions:
First, find 25 Christmas books. It may sound like a lot, but once you start gathering all your holiday books, you’ll be surprised at what you can find! They can be old books you have from around the house or ones you save for just the holiday season. Or you can purchase new books, finding them cheap from the Scholastic book clubs!
Wrap them each up individually. You can add a number to each present or let the kids choose which one to open each night.
Once you wrap them all up, put them in under your tree in some type of fun basket or container. Now every night before bed for entire month of December, your child (or if you have more than one they can take turns) picks a book out to unwrap. Now you can read it as a family together before bedtime. There’s just something about being able to un-wrap things that kids just love! And it allows for quality time together as a family. It’s a fun and inexpensive tradition my family enjoys!
A few book tips:
- I find books from after Christmas sales each year at various bookstores for great prices – so plan ahead!
- Or go to your local library and check out a bunch of holiday books! Wrap those up to read, it works all the same!
Guest post by Molly Picket – she is a fun friend living the life in Arizona. She is a mom of 2 cute boys and is having a blast with life. Her recipe club is always throwing super fun dinner parties, I love this one.
This is such a cute idea. I featured it in today’s Simple Makes post, “Best Advent Links: Preparing for Christmas.” See it at http://www.simplemakes.com/2008/12/best-advent-links-preparing-for.html. Thanks for the great post!
I absolutely love this idea, getting to open a present and reading a book together, awesome. Every year we do something similar, but on a smaller scale. Each child will recieve a hardcover book Christmas morning, not to play with now, but to save and take with them when they move out and start their own family. With 7 monkeys we now have a whole bookshelf. Thanks for sharing the idea.
This is a great idea – I think I’ll ask my bookclub friends if anyone would like to trade some holiday books. My kids are little, but a lot of them have grown chidren. They’d probably love to lend us some for December.
I love this! My children are 20 and 16 – probably too old to enjoy it, but maybe I’ll talk them into it anyway. I know that I have at least 25 Christmas books. I have all the Christmas Little Golden books from when they were little.
Kim – I love the 12 book for starters. Maybe it could be a 12 Days of Christmas theme for the kids too.
I love this idea…..I am going to try this…. but maybe with just 12 books for starters
Another great book buying tip is to buy the $.99 books from Scholastic. If you can get to a Scholastic Book Order from an Elementary teacher, there are great deals on books.
You can also ask Grandmas to buy a book for your kids every year at Christmas. Grandmas usually love to be book givers.