25 Days of Christmas Books – Christmas Countdown Activity with Free Printable of Christmas Book Lists & Blank List!
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December is quickly approaching & we wanted to remind you all about this fun activity we like to do along with the 25 Days of Christmas to countdown to Christmas and celebrate the Advent season. We have a tradition for many years of reading a different Christmas story every night in December until Christmas as part of a fun Christmas countdown that we do with our kids. I love creating special memories with our girls as something they will remember as a family tradition and this is such a simple & easy tradition to do.
It can be very frugal, too, as you can use books you already have collected over the years (I look for Christmas books at garage sales or thrift stores all during the year) or borrow books from your local library to use. Before purchasing a book, I like to get feedback from friends or browse thru it at a bookstore or check it out at the library to make sure we’ll like it first!
I have a list of some of our favorite books to read to our girls during the 25 Days of Christmas countdown listed below. This list has books for all ages from toddlers & preschoolers to older kids.
Ways to do the 25 Days of Christmas Books countdown::
Wrap each book separately and put it under the tree or in a basket
Every night your child can pick one book out from under the tree or from the basket. You could make this random or you could put the numbers #1 – 25 on each book so that you can control which books are read each night. If you have several kids, then they take turns as to who gets to pick the book out. This is fun because it adds the element of surprise & kids always love to unwrap things. :)
{Hint – if you get some of the books from the library, make sure to put those books near the front if you number them}. We are not always on the ball to wrap all the books ahead of time, so some years we wrap them all at once and other years, we just wrap a few at a time and keep adding to the basket of wrapped books. Either way, your kids will love it, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself to have all the books ready at once.
Fill a basket with books
This doesn’t involve any work so you could easily do this tradition just by rounding up your Christmas books. Just select your books and put them in a basket and either let your child choose the book each night or you choose the book. If you don’t have all your books ready at once, you can just keep adding in new books to the basket during the month.
Free Printable Book List & Blank List to Personalize
We have created FREE printables for you to make it easier to keep track of your books that you want to use (or to remember what each book is if you have wrapped & numbered them) and to have the list of Christmas books handy if you are wanting to order from the library or find at a bookstore or Amazon. I start ordering our books from the library of ones we don’t have in late November & then they start being delivered to our library by the next day, so it doesn’t take too much time.
Printable List of Book Suggestions::
Printable List of Christmas Book Suggestions -you can print this off to use as you gather books for the month of December leading up to Christmas
Printable Blank List to Track Your Books for the 25 Days of Christmas
Blank Christmas Book List – this is a list to use to write in or type up your own list of Christmas books
You can use this blank list in two ways::
- Print off the blank list & write in your own Christmas books
- Type in this list of Christmas Books and then print it off when you are done to have a personalized list of Christmas books for your family. You will need to make sure you have Adobe Reader installed to be able to edit this PDF and fill in the lines with your own books. {Adobe Reader is a free program to install on your computer} Once you have typed up your list on the lines provided, you can then print off your personalized list of Christmas books!
40 Favorite Christmas Books:
Here are some of our favorite Christmas books along with a few favorites I’ve gathered from friends as well. We try to add a few new ones each year while also keeping our favorites in there. I do keep a basket of extra Christmas books, too, so they can read those throughout the month on their own.
1. The Crippled Lamb – Max Lucado
2. Room for a Little One – Martin Waddell
3. Who is coming to our House? – Joseph Slate
4. Mortimer’s Christmas Manger – Karma Wilson
5. Follow the Star (previously titled “Small Camel follows the Star”) – Rachel Brown
6. The Little Fir Tree – Margaret Wise Brown
7. The Tale of 3 Trees – Angela Elwell Hunt & Tim Jonke
8. Song of the Stars – A Christmas Story – Sally Lloyd Jones
9. A Star So Bright – Christina Butler
10. The Little Shepherd’s Christmas – Carol Heyer
11. Humphrey’s First Christmas – Carol Heyer
12. The Spirit of Christmas – Nancy Tillman
13. An Orange for Frankie – Patricia Polacco
14. The Christmas Wish – Lori Evert
15. Birds of Bethlehem – Tomie dePaola
16. The Littlest Shepherd – Ron Mehl
17. The Legend of the Poinsettia – Tomie DePaola
18. The Twelve Days of Christmas – Jane Ray (or check out this version from Jan Brett)
19. The Animal’s Christmas Eve – Gale Wiersum
20. Mr Willowby’s Christmas Tree – Robert Barry
21. Olive, the other Reindeer – J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh
22. The Polar Express – Chris Van Allsburg
23. Jingle Bells – Iza Trapani
24. Merry Christmas Mouse – by Laura Numeroff
25. Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas – Jane O’Connor
26. Olivia helps with Christmas – Ian Falconer
27. How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Dr Seuss
28. The Legend of the Candy Cane – Lori Walburg
29. Llama Llama Holiday Drama – Anna Dewdney
30. One Winter’s Day – M. Christina Butler
31. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever – Barbara Robinson
32. Snowmen at Christmas – Caralyn & Mark Buehner
33. The Berenstain Bear and the Joy of Giving – Michael, Jan & Stan Berenstain
34. A Charlie Brown Christmas – Charles Schulz
35. The Gift Of the Magi – O. Henry
36. Christmas in the Big Woods – Laura Ingalls Wilder (My First Little House books)
37. Snowmen at Work – Carolyn Buehner
38. A Creature is Stirring – Clemente Clark Moore
39. Little Porcupine’s Christmas – Joseph Slate
40. The Night Before Christmas – lots of options for this one – this one is our favorite (We save this one for the Christmas Eve as well as read the Christmas story in the bible)
What are your favorite children’s Christmas books? We’d love to add to this list & hear your favorites!!
For more information about the 25 Days of Christmas & Christmas Advent activities, check out these posts::
- 25 Days of Christmas – How it works & Ideas for Advent Calendars (can do this for 12 Days, 5 Days, you name it) – intentional activities to spend time together as a family during Advent Season
- 25 Days of Christmas – BIG list of Christmas Advent Activities to do with your family
- Christmas Tree Cones –simple & fun activity to do with kids as a Christmas activity
- FREE printable Letter for Santa – tips on writing letters to Santa and a free printable letter
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