I have been a fan of this curriculum for a few years now… ever since I first heard about it while homeschooling my oldest. Thank you, also, for making these fun bonding activities that just happen to support literacy connections at home!

How fun! I might use reusable giftbags to cut down on cost and materials.

My 7 yo son struggled with phonemic awareness and reading last year. He loved to be read to, but was reduced to tears when it was his turn to read. After testing, he was diagnosed with dyslexia and AAR was recommended as a curriculum to build his skills. Since starting AAR, my son made huge gains, his confidence has grown and no more tears. We plan to continue with successive levels and will use AAR with my 4 yo when she is ready.

Write special family events from the year and tuck them into the ornament boxes to be read together as you decorate your tree. Each family member has a chance to read.

This is such a great idea! I learned of this idea last year and did it with our girls and they loved it! We did not have 25 Christmas books at the time but wrapped what we had and just got started unwrapping them a little later into December. The girls looked forward to it everyday! After Christmas I tried to hide our Christmas books, to keep them special for this year, but the girls constantly asked for them! Such a special idea I highly recommend! And I’m so excited to use these cute tags and check out your book list!

My kids love re-reading their favorite books so I may start mixing new books with old, beloved books as we start this tradition :)

This is a wonderful idea. Thank you! I’m going to start collecting books now.

Oh man, I LOVE this idea! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it! I have a tradition of picking out a Christmas chapter book to read aloud to the kids every night every Christmas season. It puts us in the right mindset to really appreciate the season.

Such a great idea to get kids excited about reading. Could be incorporated into a classroom as well — teacher opens a new book to read to the class everyday. Creates an association of books being a gift.

This is such a great idea. We are always looking for Christmas books at thrift stores to add to our collection.

Love this idea! And thank you for the great booklist!

I live outside the US and English books are hard to come by but there are free Christmas-themed short stories available online. They can be printed and placed in an envelope.

Thank you for the book list. During the Christmas season, I like reading books about the Christmas season to my grandson. It is a special time for both of us.

I might go ahead and wrap the books up this year. Last year, my children read ALL of our books in the first two or three days of Advent, and it was a bummer.

Love this idea! I like the tip of alternating books with movies! Thanks!

This is a great idea. Since our basket of Christmas books is already overflowing, I think I’ll try to think of a way to modify it so we don’t buy any new books, but make sure to read 25 of the ones we already have. Maybe I’ll write all the titles on slips of paper and have the children draw out one to read each day or something like that. :)

So excited to put this together for my 2 year old! I have a lot of the books in my classroom, but will also be mixing in bible stories and fun crafts/activities to keep us busy!

Can you do this with older children too?

Such a cute idea! We have a holiday book basket, but wrapping them would add a fun element; I can imagine the excitement on my littles faces st the reveal of each one😊

Love doing this with my children. We have found some of our favorite authors by borrowing enough Christmas books from the library!

I love this idea, but I wonder if my boys would be begging to open them all at once ;)

I like the idea, but I too think that it would create some confusion with the library books. Whenever we go to the library, the kids choose their own books and we read them whenever they want, when we get books any other way, they’re for keeps. Not that we usually have wrapped books… so I’m sure I could explain it up front, but I think I’d lean more towards choosing just a few books that I would actually want to buy and then give them on the advent Sunday’s or something (and if possible maybe on Wednesday’s too). That would work nice for my 4-year-old who still really likes to re-read books more than once before moving to the next one. I think a new book a day might still be a little much for her.

I have never thought of doing a book tradition like this, but I’m planning on starting this year! My boys will love this! Thank you for this suggestion!

Great idea! Not sure I will be able to get all the books around and wrapped by Sunday so I may just pick out books that we have (I have some new ones stored away to pull out periodically) put them in a basket and read one a day.

We do this each year! I hide the Christmas books away each year, and our three little ones LOVE unwrapping books, they get so excited to re-read each one they had ‘forgotten!’ It’s my favourite way to do advent!

I love this idea but our bookshelves are already overflowing.

We’ve done this for a few years, but I really dislike wrapping! :) So now I just put all our Christmas books in a few different baskets and let each child pick one (or more) out each day to read. And if I want to read one on a specific day, then I always get a chance to choose too!

When the kids were younger I would buy a new Christmas book each year to add to our collection. Now I look forward to sharing them with grandchildren, though even my big kids still read their favorites.

We have done this in previous years, and we will do it again! Since our kids are older, we’ll do lengthier chapter books but not as many.

Great idea! Also, I never actually knew when Advent started, I just assumed it was the 25 days of Christmas.

I our family we (the parents) give the kids books for Christmas. We started with books about Christmas, but now we have moved to any good literature.

I am getting this ready right now because I remembered it from last year- such great suggestions on the Christmas booklist- Christmas Day in the morning was our favorite last year!

I love your curriculum- my kids look forward to reading so much I have to tell them they can’t do more lessons that day cuz we have to do other subjects. I would love to get the credit so I can purchase levels 5-7 of spelling!

Every Christmas our family reads each night from the Jesus Storybook Bible. As soon as dinner is over, we read a chapter and put a corresponding ornament on a little tree (they can be found online). My kids love it! They would really like this idea of unwrapping a book to read too! That may be our next before bedtime Christmas tradition!