An Advent Calendar For The Whole Family

In the past few years, we’ve been buying Playmobil advent calendars for the kids, and although we LOVE them, we needed something new this year. I did buy both kids the Kinder advent calendars, but they usually forget to eat the chocolates after about day four (this makes my husband VERY happy). Then I happened upon a tweet from @OhMommy, who saw this fab idea for a Book Advent Calendar on a blog called MADE (this is one gorgeous blog – you must check it out) and I knew I had my new family advent calendar.

Being  a huge book fan, I immediately fell in love with this idea. I just think this is such a wonderful idea that the entire family can enjoy together.

So how does the whole thing work? It’s lovely in its simplicity.

You need 25 Christmas/Holiday books, you wrap them individually, and each night (I plan to do it at night for our nightly bedtime story), you unwrap one to read together. It’s really that simple.

So, I started off by looking around the house to find all the holiday/Christmas books we currently owned. I was able to find about 12 books that I thought would appeal to both my five and seven year old.

In need of 13 more, I went out and looked at Homesense & Winners (the Canadian equivalent to TJ Maxx), Chapters and also online at TheBookDepository.com (my first time using them, but they ship to Canada for FREE!). I was able to find eight more great ones in stores and ordered the five last ones I needed online.

Next thing to do is wrap them all individually – it really doesn’t take that long (Chapters wrapped the five I purchased there for free as well – thank you Chapters!). I’m hoping the five I’ve ordered will be here by early next week, so we’ll be all set to go by December 1st. I also plan to number each wrapped book so that I can ensure that the much beloved ones (like Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch) can be the last two we read.

Here are the books that will be in our Book Advent Calendar this year:

• The Berenstain Bears Meet Santa Bear by Stan & Jan Berenstain
• Little Miss Spider: A Christmas Wish by David Kirk
• Arthur’s Christmas by Marc Brown
• The Year Without Santa Claus by Phyllis McGinley
• Russell’s Christmas Magic by Rob Scotton
• The Longest Christmas List Ever by Gregg & Evan Spiridellis
• The Night Before the Night Before Christmas by Natasha Wing
• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Eileen Daly
• Christmas by Dick Bruna
• The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
• Olivia and the Christmas Present by Ian Falconer
• The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore
• Olivia Helps with Christmas by Ian Falconer
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
• A Charlie Brown Christmas by Charles M. Schulz
• Santa’s Stuck by Rhonda Gowler Greene
• Madeline’s Christmas by Ludwig Bemelmans
• The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll
• Wombat Divine by Mem Fox
• The Biggest Christmas Tree Ever by Steven Kroll
• The Christmas Hat by A. J. Wood
• The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
• Auntie Claus and the Key to Christmas by Elise Primavera
• A Bad Kitty Christmas by Nick Bruel
• A Porcupine in a Pine Tree by Helaine Becker

Can’t wait until December1st!!

Tagged as: advent calendars, book advent calendar, books, children's christmas books, christmas advent craft