I’ve been recently inspired by the idea of a Christmas Book Advent Calendar. Have you seen all the pins on Pinterest?! It’s such an awesome idea!

As I’ve shared previously, as Early Childhood Educators, my husband and I truly believe in the importance of fostering literacy. Hence, when I stumbled across this idea, how could we not do it!?

photo credit: © depositphotos.com / CorDesign

Every night, for the month of December, my daughter will unwrap a “new” Christmas book to read before bed.

I didn’t like the idea of wasting wrapping paper, so all of the books will be wrapped in fabric (this way we can also reuse the fabric year after year). We also made and laminated numbered tags so that we could reuse those as well. It my own eco-friendly version!

As I embarked on this project, I discovered that we already had 15 Christmas books. I would only need nine more to make a complete set. So began the task of scouring used book stores and thrift shops for Christmas picture books. We now have more than enough books to countdown to Christmas.

Some of our favourite Christmas books include:

Counting Christmas (Classic Board Books) by Karen Katz

Merry Christmas, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt

Merry Christmas, Curious George by Margaret and H.A. Ray

Have You Seen Christmas? by Vicki Howie and Caroline Pedlar

One Starry Night by Lauren Thompson

A Wish to be a Christmas Tree by Colleen Munroe

A Charlie Brown Christmas by Charles M. Schulz

Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson

We plan on putting a new book into the rotation every year. I love Christmas traditions… and I’m so excited to start our Christmas Book Advent Calendar!

Jennifer Bly

Author of My Kitchen, My Classroom: An Introduction to Homeschool and creator of The Deliberate Mom. Jennifer writes about parenting, homeschooling, her faith, and life with her husband and two girls. Jennifer has a Bachelor of Applied Human Service Administration Degree with a specialization in Early Learning in Child Care.