Christmas Cookies

Today's book is Christmas Cookies by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Though not a traditional Christmas book, this book fits in the season by explaining abstract terms and vocabulary often used during the holidays.

Summary: Who knew that baking cookies could lead to explaining abstract holiday vocabulary? Ms. Rosenthal uses the theme of baking to define words such as anticipation, tradition, disappointed, celebrate, appreciative, and more. Each page is beautifully illustrated and is a wonderful way to introduce new vocabulary to children.

I enjoyed reading this book with my children. It was a wonderful way to talk about concepts such as selfish, thoughtful, gratitude and more. This is not just a book for young kids either. The descriptions paired with the fun illustrations are a great way for children to visualize the word meanings.

"Gratitude means taking a minute to look around the table and be thankful for all the people and all the cookies."

Of course, after reading this book baking cookies is the perfect way to talk about some of the concepts again! :)

My 5yr. old received her great-grandmother's apron for her birthday. We talked about how we can wear our special aprons each year as a tradition.

Lil Sis said she wants to be a chef. So Big Sis helped her make her own batch of Christmas cookies. Lil Sis was appreciative that Big Sis helped her!

They all got to decorate and eat their own sugar cookie too.

Some of the kids also designed their own Christmas Cookies using this Christmas Cookie Coloring Sheet. We would have glued them onto paper plates, but we ran out. So we arranged them onto real plates for now. :)

What's Your Favorite Christmas Cookie?

Christmas in the Manger

I just think the illustrations in Christmas in the Manger are too cute! This sturdy and cute board book is perfect for babies through preschool and was our book of the day.

Summary: The simple, rhyming text and cute illustrations are a perfect way to share the Christmas story with very young children. First the animal are introduced, then the shepherds, wise men, Mary and Jesus.

I don't plan on doing crafts for every single book we read this season, but if I have an idea, I go with it. I was inspired by the illustrations in this book and had so much fun coming up with a craft. The characters were simple yet cute. So I looked around my house and found some simple objects to use for our craft.

"I am the baby
asleep in the hay,
and I am the reason
for Christmas Day."
~Nola Buck

Isn't this the cutest Bottle Cap Baby Jesus? I have complete step-by-step instructions over at The Homeschool Village today. :)

Today is the last day of our group 5 Days of Christmas series. I hope you have had some time to visit all the blogs and see their awesome Christmas posts!  Well we would love to see your favorite Christmas craft, activity, or other Christmas-related post too! Pick your favorite one, add a link back here so others know where to join in, and share!


Please stop by and visiting my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy Birthday
The Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can Make
Mama's Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts

*P.S. Even though this is the end of the 5 Day series, I will continue to "try" to post a book a day during the month of December! I've also added a Christmas Book page to help keep everything organized.

A Christmas Prayer: Christmas Book

Today's book is A Christmas Prayer by Amy Parker. This is a Christmas book perfect for your littlest ones.

Summary: A little child talks about how every aspect of the nativity story is a gift from God.  From Gabriel to baby Jesus, they are each a precious Christmas gift to us from God.

The book has simple text with the repeating phrase, "Thank you, God, for __________ Your precious Christmas gift". My little ones were able to repeat that phrase after a couple of pages. I appreciated that this book allowed us to talk about how each of the characters in our nativity set were real and each were a gift from God that helped tell the story of the best gift of all-- Jesus.

After reading this book we pulled out our Nativity Sensory Box that we made last year. As the girls searched for the pieces, we reviewed what the book said about that person.

"Thank You, God, for Jesus,

Your one and only Son.

A Savior sent to save the world!

Yes, Christmas had begun!" 

~Amy Parker

Other posts in this series:

5 Days of Christmas Books: Day 1 - My Favorite Childhood Book
5 Days of Christmas Books: Day 2 - The Christmas Book Book
5 Days of Christmas Books Day 3 - The Song of the Stars
5 Days of Christmas Books Day 4 - Humphrey's First Christmas

Please stop by and visiting my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy Birthday
The Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can Make
Mama's Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts

Humphrey's First Christmas

I fell in love with Humphrey as soon as I saw his face on the cover of Humphrey's First Christmas by Carol Heyer. Something about his smile and eyes just drew me in. When I finally read the book, I was so glad I picked up this book for our Christmas book reading. This story shares the birth of Jesus through the eyes of a camel.

Summary: Upset that he's missing his blanket, Humphrey is determined to get it back. It's that blanket that keeps him warm--why should he be left out in the cold? The illustrations in this book are fantastic and help convey how Humphrey was feeling. In the end, did he really need that blanket?

This is another wonderful children's Christmas book. The illustrations are just as important as the words because they work together to tell the whole story.

After we read the story, I found my little girls with the Little People Nativity set reenacting the book. Every camel they see in decorations or books is now Humphrey. That makes me smile. :)

When I pre-read this book, I immediately knew what I wanted my older kids to do. I purchased a couple of fleece blanket sets on sale so that I could have the kids make some blankets to give away.

 

All three of my older kids worked on the project. Thanks to my mom (who knew you needed fabric scissors for this--lol!) we were able to complete two blankets to give away.

A perfect book activity that also gave my kids the opportunity to share with others.

Other posts in this series:

5 Days of Christmas Books: Day 1 - My Favorite Childhood Book
5 Days of Christmas Books: Day 2 - The Christmas Book Book
5 Days of Christmas Books Day 3 - The Song of the Stars

Please stop by and visiting my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy Birthday
The Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can Make
Mama's Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts

Song of the Stars Christmas Book

The first book starting off our Christmas book reading is Song of the Stars by Sally Lloyd-Jones. I purposely picked this book to be our first book of the season, which we will read on Dec. 1st.

Summary: All of creation is filled with anticipation of the coming newborn king. The woodland creatures stirred, the mightly lion roared, the great white whales sang, "It's time!" A beautifully written and illustrated Christmas book that young children and adults will enjoy.

This is one of my new favorite Christmas books. Sally Lloyd-Jones was able to weave a new perspective of the Christmas story from creation's point-of-view. The story paired with the beautiful crackled-art paintings by Alison Jay is sure to become a family favorite.

"On a lonely peak a lion raised his strong head and roared it out to the empty wilderness... "The Mighty King! The Prince of Peace!"

This is why I chose this book to be our first Christmas book reading--- it weaves in some of the different names of Jesus. I had already decided that we were going to do a mini-study on the Names of Jesus during this Christmas season, so this book seemed the perfect way to start off our Names of Jesus advent chain.

Click to Download the Names of Jesus Advent Chain

Now the most important part of a Christmas Book tradition is reading them. Sounds simple right? Sometimes I put too much pressure on myself to do other activities to go along with the book and when they don't get done, I'm disappointed. So this year I'm giving myself grace to not do activities but to concentrate on creating some good reading memories with my children.

Some of the books though, as soon as I read them an idea pops into my head. That was the case with this book. So here's an extra activity that you could do that goes along with this book.

Crackled Star Ornament

Supplies:
2 different shades of yellow acrylic paint
Crackle paint medium (found in the same aisle as the acrylic paint)
cardstock or wooden stars
Star template if printing on cardstock
pipe cleaner or ribbon
marker

The illustrations in the book have a beautiful crackle finish on them. I knew I had the supplies on hand to recreate that effect at home. I thought my children would find it interesting how the paint "cracks" and the color shows through. Be aware, this project should be done in stages to allow for drying -- aka this is not a fast project! It is easy though. :)

First I printed out the star template onto cardstock. Then I painted with a darker yellow using a sponge brush. Let this dry completely. After it is dry, paint a coat of crackle medium over the stars using a foam brush. Let this dry completely. If doing this with young kids maybe do one step in the morning, one step in the afternoon, and then one step in the evening.

One the crackle medium is completely dry, you can paint on the top coat. I chose a lighter yellow. Paint that over the star. This is the fun part. While it is drying, you can see the paint starting to "crack" apart. The base coat then shows through! Once this is dry go ahead and cut out the stars. (You can also do this whole process with those wooden stars found at craft stores.)

I turned one of the stars into an ornament for our tree.

And another into a story stick for when we read the story again.

*I just found out about this Song of the Stars Event at Zonderkids:

December 8th, 6:00-7:00pm (ET)

Featuring LIVE Q&A with Sally, special musical guests, giveaways, and more!

Visit livestream.com/zonderkidz to RSVP today!

5 Days of Christmas Books: Day 1 - My Favorite Childhood Book
5 Days of Christmas Books: Day 2 - The Christmas Book Book


Please stop by and visiting my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy Birthday
The Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can Make
Mama's Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts

Christmas Book Book

Yesterday I mentioned how I worked on a new Christmas book system for my family to use this year. I liked the surprise element of wrapping books, but I don't like to wrap. I also have a hard time doing a specific activity for 25 days straight. Some days we like to read through 3 books, and other days none at all. I also wanted to incorporate iPad book reading and listening into our Christmas book tradition. That's hard to wrap under a tree. So I came up with a Christmas Book book (I couldn't think of another name to call it at 1:00 am.)

 

I'm hoping that this little book will become a fun Christmas book tradition. Would you like to see how I made it and plan to use it?

Supplies:

4x6 photo album (one of those cheap, plastic ones at the Dollar Store work)

decorative paper

ribbons

stapler
adhesive
stickers or stamps

Pick coordinating scrapbook paper and trim to 4x6. I went ahead and made enough for 25 days, but with this system you can do more or less.

 

Number and decorate the pages and then slip into the photo album. I decided to do a green and red pattern.

The next step was probably the hardest. If you noticed in my supply picture above, my little photo album was purple flowers. That's not very Christmas-y. This particular photo album also did not have a way to slip in a new piece of paper for the cover. Since it is plastic, finding an adhesive that wouldn't peel off made covering it with paper a hassel. So what I did was carefully use an Exacto-knife to open up the top-inside cover of the album. I used a metal ruler to guide the cut along the inside seam. I would have taken a picture but I couldn't figure out how to hold the knife and shoot the camera at the same time. :) Once I did that, I was able to pull out the purple cardboard cover. I glued scrapbook paper onto that and then inserted it back into the album. I did the same for the back of the album too.

Then using my favorite photo-editing program, I created another 4x6 insert with all the Christmas book titles. I know what you're thinking--wrapping the books would have been easier. I see your point, but I'm hoping that this will last a couple of years!

Once I was done with the book inserts, I slipped them randomly behind the numbers.

So How Does This Work?
You can structure it two different ways. To act like a Christmas-countdown calendar, or to act like a Christmas book collection counter. I chose the latter for this year.

During the month of December, for our read-aloud time, one child will pick a tag from behind the number. They'll see the book cover image and go pick that book out of the book basket to read. If we want to read more than one, then the next child will pull the tag out from page number 2 etc. After we are done reading, we will put the books we read on display in the front room. Then we will write the date we read the book on the back of the book tag. If we happened to add an activity to go along with the book, we'll write that info. too. Then we will place the tag in front of the number in the Christmas book so we know where we left off.


I created a tag for some stories I want my kids to listen to from Tales to Go Christmas Edition and other story radio sources. I know that I will probably be adding an iPad book or two as well. I am hoping that this will let my kids have some element of surprise and will be a good way to record some memories of the books we read (or listened to) together by jotting down little tid-bits on the back of the book cards. I'm looking forward to trying this out in a couple of days!

If you are interested in doing a version of this Christmas Book Book, you can download blank 4x6 book inserts. You can either write the name of the book or add the photos yourself to match your book collection.

Please stop by and visiting my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home  Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy  Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's  Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little  Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower  Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy  Birthday
The  Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can  Make
Mama's  Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts

5 Days of Christmas Books #1

I remember my favorite Christmas book when I was a child. My brother and I would fight take turns scratching the smelly sticker on the page. Anyone remember which book I'm talking about?

The Sweet Smell of Christmas is a cute book that brings back many memories for me as a child. Though it doesn't focus on the real reason for Christmas (aka Santa is in there), many of things the little bears did were things our family did to get ready for Christmas. Plus we thought the scratch-and-sniff stickers were cool!

A couple years ago I adopted the tradition of purchasing at least one new-to-us Christmas book to be read in December. This year we're up to 15 books. Many people who have this tradition in their homes wrap each book up and place under the tree (or special box) so that the children pick one book out a day. It is used like a book count-down calendar.

I'll admit it-- I hate wrapping presents so wrapping each book just wasn't going to happen. I store all our Christmas books in a wrapped box. This is last year's picture, but the box survived the packing and still looks the same. My kids and I enjoy looking at the books all through the month. I like the "surprise" element of individually wrapped books though, so I thought about how I could add the surprise while still knowing what books we would be doing. Makes sense right? Plus I wanted a way to document the book-making memories we were creating and find a way to include books we read or listened to on the iPad. So I came up with a new system that we are going to try out this year.

Which I'll show you in detail tomorrow... :)

But while you are here, I'd love to know what were some of your favorite Christmas books as a child?

Please stop by and visit my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy Birthday
The Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can Make
Mama's Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts