Countdown to Christmas!

Perhaps this would have been better posted at the beginning of the month, but I'll still share anyway.  Each year the girls look forward to doing some sort of Christmas countdown, or an advent calendar.  When I was a kid, I remember having one of those calendars with the little chocolates hiding behind each day's window.  But as I have yet to find one that's safe for a child with a peanut allergy, that idea is out.

The past couple years we've used a countdown wreath, with small containers that we can store treats or notes in.  But it takes a lot of brain power to think up all the different notes, activities, and treats to stuff inside the containers, coordinate the activities with the already full calendar, and then evenly distribute everything among two girls opening containers on alternate days.  This year it just proved too much for me.  So I loved this new idea a friend decided to try out.

It's a Christmas book countdown!  The idea is you gather up 25 Christmas/winter books you already own.  (We ended up being just a few books short, so we borrowed some from a neighbor who has a Christmas collection to rival the library's!)

I let the girls wrap the books up, which they loved!  They're always asking to help wrap presents, and this was great practice!

So we started the month with a nice tall stack of books. 

The girls take turns selecting and unwrapping one book each day until Christmas.  Then we sit down and Emma or I read the book.

The countdown has been a hit so far!  My friend who is also doing the book countdown with her kids suggested that next year we could wrap our books up and then swap them between our two families.  That way we'd all be surprised by the books we unwrap and we'd get to read some new stories too!  Sounds good to me!