MCM: Books and Music

One of my favorite December traditions is our Christmas book box. Each year I try to purchase a couple new Christmas books to add to our collection. On December 1st, I pull out all our holiday books, place them in a special box, and the children pick one to read each day. We don't quite have enough for the full month yet, but with the help of the library and Paperback Swap, we have a good selection. I love that the kids are connecting memories with the books, and that I can use that time to share books that I feel help make the season more meaningful. Several of my books have been worn out already that I'm going to have to look for replacements this year. I often find my kids reading or looking through the pages of our special collection all on their own during the month of December. To make the book basket even more festive, you can wrap a book in gift-wrap and have a child unwrap a book each day. Once Christmas is over, I pack all the books up (I know, some of you just cringed--lol!) and don't pull them out until next year.
(If you are reading this post in a reader, the following Christmas book widgets won't show up unless you go to the actual blog post. Scroll down for more)






In the past we've also used the same concept with holiday movies. We choose one night a week to watch a special Christmas movie together. We usually try to have popcorn and hot-chocolate too.

One thing I would like to implement into our holiday routine is Christmas music. I have a couple of CD's that I enjoy listening to and play during the holidays, but my kids don't really know many Christmas carols. Christmas carols were such a big part of my childhood and evoke so many wonderful memories for me. Unfortunatly, we don't have as many opportunities to sing them now as I once did as a child (Christmas carols were basically the only songs we sang at church during the month of December when I was a kid). So I really hope some of you can share some ideas, units or favorite cd's.

You can read about our past and future Making Christmas Meaningful topics in this introductory post: Making Christmas Meaningful

To help keep organized for Christmas, I've created a couple more planner pages to add to the Family Traditions Notebook.



Do you do any special Christmas book unit studies or Christmas composer units? How do you use books/music/movies in your holiday routine to help instill the true meaning of Christmas?