It’s the most wonderful time of the year!! I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love Christmastime! I especially love incorporating this time of year into the classroom and one of my all-time favorite Christmas traditions to do with my students is to countdown to Christmas with a Christmas Book Countdown!
Books are the absolute best gift! Starting at the beginning of December we’d count down the days to Christmas with a book to read each day! It’s easy to do–I’d just wrap up my Christmas books (no need to go out and buy new ones, unless you want to of course!) and the kids would get SO excited to unwrap and read one each day together! Can we also talk about how adorable this Christmas wrapping paper is from Hobby Lobby?! I’m going to be wrapping ALL THE GIFTS in it this year, because I love it so much!
I’ve created a resource that contains 25 Christmas gift tags to attach to your books, along with a book bin label and a Christmas Book Countdown checklist.
Trust me, you’ll want to write down the books you’re wrapping so that you can remember which day you planned to read each book. If we had a special holiday activity I would try to plan the book we’d read that day to coincide with the activity. For example, when we did gingerbread activities I’d plan for that day to have a gingerbread book.
The tags and checklist include the dates from December 1-25. I know you aren’t in school all of those days, but since the dates for weekends/breaks change each year I’ve included them all so you can choose the ones you need. Just cross out or write “weekend” or “break” on the dates you don’t need on the checklist.
You could also use this for your own family too (what a great tradition to start at home!) I can’t wait to start this with our little one next Christmas!
Get started with this great Christmas tradition by grabbing the Christmas Book Countdown resource in my TPT store (click HERE or on the image below.)
If you’re looking for some great Christmas books to add to your collection, I’ve put together a blog post with a list of December Read Alouds For The Primary Classroom! These are some of my students and my favorite books to read and I know that your kids will love them too!
You can also find more great book recommendations on my Instagram account by following the hashtag #foxwellfavorites. I hope to see you over there!
Grab Your Holiday FREEBIE!
If you’re looking for a fun and effective way to get your students’ attention during the holiday excitement you won’t want to miss these holiday call & response cards!
I’ve put together 10 of our favorite holiday ones to use in December! They are so easy to use! Plus, they work great whether you’re in person or teaching virtually!
Merry Christmas!!
Celeste says
Such a great idea! I love it!
Becca says
Thanks so much Celeste! It’s one of my favorite traditions! Such a special way to celebrate reading in December!!
I love this! I am a Reading Intervention teacher and am unable to read trade books aloud very often in my small groups, but I am going to prep mine and share them with a classroom in my building this December thanks to your great post and resource! I even shared the link on my blog FB page!
~Jennifer
Stories and Songs in Second
Thanks so much Jennifer!! Thanks for spreading the love of reading with others! Have a wonderful Christmas!
-Becca
I did this with my own two children and it has provided some of our best memories! We were all a little sad when they outgrew the books. We did do some short chapter books as my oldest aged out of the picture books. As my daughter approached the age of 11 is when she decided she no longer wanted to do it. I learned a couple of helpful hints: 1. Wrap your books when you tuck them away for the next year. SO much easier to have it all ready to go when December rolls around. I bought cheap wrapping paper with the after-Christmas sales and saved money that way. 2. Your books don’t have to be “new”! Many of ours were purchased at garage sales, thrift stores or were welcome gifts from Godparents, school gift exchange, etc. If you only have 15 books, then do only 15 days worth! I would HIGHLY recommend to parents and teachers alike!!