Our Reading Advent Calendar

If you don’t LOVE Christmas then look away now…

I thought I would share with you one of our favourite Christmas traditions. It started for me when I was a little girl and last year we started it with Lil G. I am really excited to do this again and with the help of Routes to Reading we have some new books to add to the pile! It’s something which as a little girl I looked forward to, maybe even as much as the little drops of chocolate each morning! Each night I would look forward to picking out a book to read that night, beautifully wrapped and sitting patiently under the Christmas tree.

Let me introduce you to our Reading Advent Calendar…

Last year we wrapped up twenty-four children’s books, with the 25th book delivered by Santa and popped into Lil G’s stocking at the end of his bed! The books don’t all have to be new. We add a mixture of new and old. We also add in both Christmas and general stories for us all to enjoy. 14 of our 24 are Christmas themed. We pop them under the Christmas tree with Lil G’s bean bag next to them. Before bed each evening, we encourage our boy to choose one book to open and we read together…until Christmas.

Reading at bedtime is one of {The Ordinary Moments} for Our Little Family however adding a little bit of Christmas Magic to the tradition brings a new kind of Ordinary to it, making it rather special. We have already started to talk to Lil G about it and his excitement is now building! Eek

The Christmas Stories we picked last year were…

 

 

Lil G’s favourites were the ‘That’s not my’ collection, The Usborne ‘Very First Words Christmas’ book and of course ‘The Night Before Christmas’ (Lil G was two and a half at the time).

 

As his reading has developed I am really looking forward to working our way through the Usborne ‘Illustrated Stories for Christmas’ this year. Which is a collection of 9 beautiful stories. He has also become a huge fan of the little bushy tailed rabbit so we are really looking forward to reading ‘The Christmas Tale of Peter Rabbit’.

 

Routes to Reading have been kind enough to gift us 4 new books to add to our collection. We were short on new books for our general stories so these will go perfectly with our little collection.

Routes to Reading has a really fantastic website with a super ‘Little Ones Library’ which is broken down into categories and age to help you choose a suitable book. In terms of pricing, they are extremely competitive and often match Amazon’s prices! Highly recommended.

Roll on the 1st December I say!

What books do you read with your little one at Christmas time? Do let me know if there are any others you would recommend as you can never have enough books to read! We are now off to pick the remaining 6 stories to add to our Reading Advent Calendar and of course to wrap them all up in some pretty Christmas paper. Which is one of my favourite parts.

Feel free to share Our Little Family tradition so all can enjoy!

Happy Reading x