Today we finally finished decorating the tree
Set up the nativity
and put the other decorations around the house.
The year I was pregnant with Jacinta I bought a Fisher Price nativity. Each year it is set up in a place that the children can touch and play with it. This year I also placed our Father Christmas with his countdown blocks, a nativity advent calender, and all of our Christmas books nearby. ( I will share a photo of our 'Christmas corner' tomorrow - I forgot to take one today) As many of the books with the Christmas story in them are little bible story books etc, I decided to bookmark each of them so we could find the Christmas story quickly and easily at bedtime. I needed some Christmas bookmarks.
After we finished decorating today I set Isaac up with Caleb's 'special' water colour pencils, and he choose a few Christmas images to draw. He then carefully painted over his lines with some water and created these gorgeous little masterpieces.
Once they were dry I laminated them and cut them out.
They now take pride of place in the books, marking the special story.
I'm hoping that each night after we find the right number and discover which picture is under the advent calender door, we can choose a book to read together before bedtime. Tonight Jacinta choose the night before Christmas (she is very amused by Santa shaking like a bowlful of jelly) They both snuggled on my knee, Isaac with one of his bookmarks held tight in his hand, and we read together.
I really need to expand our collection of Christmas books. Ideally Id like to build enough of a collection to do an advent countdown with books like this one on 'Simple as that'.
Do you and your children have a favourite Christmas book you would recommend?
3 comments:
We have lots of Christmas books, one of my favourites it The Christmas Story by Dick Bruna. I actually saw this post last month which I thought would help me buy a few more Christmas books this year http://planningwithkids.com/2010/11/09/best-christmas-books/ I love the idea of wrapping them up and letting the boys select a parcel each night. Like the blog you linked to I too leave 'Twas the Night before Christmas' to read Christmas Eve just before bed time
Awww, what a sweet idea! These are so cute, I bet they become the first Christmas "thing" that comes out of the box in years to come.
Our favourite Christmas-themed book (aside from the Bible stories), is a book called "The Christmas Mystery", by Jostien Gaarder. It's about a little girl who runs backward through time with angels, a few sheep and the Three Wise Men to the birth of Jesus.
You could always do it with a mix of Christmas and none Christmas themed books until you build up enough of a collection... gorgeous idea, you could even make 24 fabric bags to put them in to reuse every year, rather than wrapping paper.
We went to Borders on Friday and picked out a couple of Christmas books (joined the VIP club and got $20 vouchers each), Beth chose the one that Kirsty mentioned above.
My favourites of our current collection are The Twelve Dogs of Christmas, Santa's Aussie Holiday, and The Nativity (because of the beautiful illustrations by Julie Vivas).
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