Growing up I loved getting the advent calendars where you would open up each day to a piece of chocolate. It was a tradition my sister and I had every year during the holiday. I want to pass along those traditions now that I have a family of my own, so I’ve been thinking of an advent calendar idea for my kids. I’ve seen a couple of ideas lately, including:
- Acts of Kindness
- Paper Chain
- Experiences
- Books
- Trinkets
- Or a Mix of the Above
When I first saw the book advent calendar theme, I instantly loved the idea for my family. My kids and I read all the time together, and we really bond over books. The holidays are extremely busy, so gathering on the couch or in bed with my kids’ reading a book together each night to celebrate the holiday season is so special to me. For the books, I’ll get most of them from our local library. However, I’ll purchase a few to add to our collection every year. My kids are 3 and 1, and I hope they remember this tradition for years to come.
Personalizing your own advent calendar can be a special way to make it your family’s unique holiday tradition. I’m putting a twist on our book advent calendar. On weekends I’ll be adding activities/experiences along with our themed book of choice. For our tradition I’m only going until December 24th, but it’s completely up to you if you want to go until December 25th. Below is our list of 24 books paired with a handful of activities to start our new tradition next month.
Book Advent Calendar
- Bear Stays Up for Christmas
- Construction Site on Christmas Night
- Pick a Pine Tree (Experience/Gift – Heading to a Christmas Tree Farm to pick out our tree and giving Levi and Charlee their ornaments to put on the tree.)
- The Polar Express (Activity – New Christmas Jammie’s and watching The Polar Express Movie)
- The Snowy Day
- The Crayon’s Christmas
- Grumpy Monkey Oh No! Christmas
- Billy and the Mini Monsters at Christmas
- The Jolly Christmas Postman
- Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer (Activity – Making Rudolph pancakes for breakfast.)
- Little Blue Christmas (Experience – Going to the Wild Center to see the Wild Lights.)
- Stickman
- The Little Snow Plow
- A Christmas Wish: A Peter Rabbit Tale
- I Got the Christmas Spirit
- The Santa Post
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Toy – Gifting Levi and Charlee The Grinch Toni for their Toni Box.)
- I Love You More Than Christmas (Experience – Drive to see lights in our neighborhood.)
- A Very Merry Christmas
- 5 More Sleeps til Christmas
- The 12 Days of Christmas
- The Little Reindeer (Activity – Make reindeer food.)
- Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree
- The Night Before Christmas (Gift/Activity – Create a Christmas Eve box to give Levi and Charlee. I’m including a holiday puzzle, recipe to make cookies for Santa, hot chocolate, and a movie. This box represents items to do as a family to spend quality time together on Christmas Eve.)
I’m so excited to start our new tradition on December 1st. I hope this will be one of many years of reading together and adding books to our holiday collection. There’s a fun advent calendar through Usborne Books, where you receive a book advent calendar of 24 mini books. I’ll link it here for you to check it out. It makes it super easy since all the books are included! It’s on sale right now for $25 (originally $34.99)!
I hope your holiday season is off to a great start! Remember to savor this time, as it always seems to go by too fast.
Ashley's Paige 