Christmas Book Advent Calendar
Better than chocolate! OK - not really, but it's a close second.
We have had an advent book tree for the last few years and I'm so happy to say it's a tradition that Lucas and I both love.
Last year the plan was to do the chocolate Advent calendar in the morning (after breakfast of course) and the book one was for night time. So we would read the book before bed.
All the best plans can sometimes go awry though. It ended up with Lucas forgetting about the chocolate calendar ... (What the???) and every morning he opened a new book. Sometimes he would read it straight away, sometimes he would leave it for bed time.
What books do we include?
We have a healthy stack of Christmas books. Many given as gifts, some handed down from older cousins, and some that we (of course I mean me) have purchased because I'm a sucker for a book.
This Dinosaur one has been a favourite!
The books that are in our advent calendar are varied in topic and size. We don't have 25 Christmas books. Many are chapter books that we will be reading during the year, not just at Christmas. Some puzzle books are fun too, for summer holidays.
So every year after Christmas is over I take some books out of the pile. Some books he has grown out of and some are meant to be read once.
Wrapping them is part of the fun.
I love to wrap the books in newspaper to keep the cost down and keep it more environmentally friendly. I also love the look of them.
Adding a strip of Christmas paper gives the pile a great pop of colour.
Don't tell anyone - but I'll let you into a little secret - I cheat! I never have 25 books at the start of the month.
I'm just not that organised. I figure if I have 15 or so then I can add a few as we go. Lucas is getting older and now he counts them and tells me how many more I need. As his maths gets better he has been enjoying working out the date, how many we should have and then the amount we are missing. Ahh for the days when he thought the 15 books on the pile was all we needed!
I thought about numbering them all ... but Lucas loves choosing the book he wants to open each day. Sometimes he opens a large thin book, hoping it will be a picture book, sometimes he opens a novel size because it's bound to be new.
Do you have enough books to create a Calendar? We have some gorgeous books you can add to your list.
Enjoy your reading. We would love to hear if you do this and see what you calendar looks like! xx
Helle.
