I love to cuddle up with the kids and read Christmas books. It’s just magical to read the same books to them now as 8 and 9 year olds as I read to them when they were two. Of course there are some we’ve outgrown, and there’s other books we’ve added in because I like them.
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Christmas books that point to Christ
Some of my favorite Christmas books retell the story of the Nativity, others add in details that weren’t in the Bible, and others are just fun retellings.
Mortimer’s Christmas Manger tells the story of a young mouse looking for a home for Christmas. It’s by the same author illustrator pair as the Bear books my kids have loved so much. It’s got a wonderful sense of poem and lyrical quality to it. A few years ago I wrote a unit for The Homeschool Village to go with this book.
I love the illustrations for Animals Christmas Carol, they’re amazing quality, and I’ve got a post coming up next week with a fun craft we did for this last year.
I think my Mom bought me The Donkey’s Dream back when I was in college, or at least I remember having this book long before I had kids. Or maybe I bought her the book because I loved the illustrations that much and I gave her it. I’ve been known to give people presents that I really wanted in the past.
Who is Coming to Our House? is a rhyming book with lots of repetition and is great for toddlers as it does a good job of going over the animal noises. It pairs very well with Animal’s Christmas Carol for a fun way to get a book for older and younger kids along the same theme.
My kids have absconded with our other Christmas books, so I’ll have to dig them out of their room. I could have sworn we had more Christ-centered Christmas books…
Just for fun Christmas Books
While I believe it’s very important to teach my kids about the reason we are celebrating, that doesn’t mean I’m opposed to some just for fun Christmas books like these.
I’ll be honest I’m not a big fan of Sneezy the Snowman, but my kids are. It’s a cute story of a snowman who’s always cold and looking for ways to get warm. I’ve got plans for a craft for this book this year.
Back when I was teaching we did an entire unit about Santa Mouse and a fun candy cane mouse craft. I have a few other mouse Christmas books: Tale of the Christmas Mouse, The Mouse Before Christmas, and Santa Mouse, where are you?.
The Legend of Mistletoe and the Christmas Kittens is a great story about an unusual cat finding his “forever family” in the middle of Christmas time. We used this book a few years ago as part of our study of Iceland and we made some fun coffee filter Mistletoe cats.
I love this copy of Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus for its’ gorgeous illustrations. I bought this way back when I was teaching, and read it every year to my students and we went through the amazing vocabulary in the book. I’m planning to use this as a vocabulary lesson this year with the kids.
I always smile when I read this book because I feel like Santa at times, “when do I get a holiday?” This book ends rather like you’d expect, but it’s quite fun to see how you get there.
Get Well, Santa! is the book we pull out when we get sick during the Christmas season, because it always seems to happen at least once a year. For us it was last weekend. Of course in this particular bout I was so sick that I just hid in my room for the whole weekend.
My kids always crack up as we read When Santa Lost His Ho! Ho! Ho! because the ending is so much fun. A few years ago we made our own “When Santa lost his Ho Ho Ho! craft“, and we might well repeat it this year.
Tyrannoclaus is just silly, there’s no other word for it. But, it regularly disappears up into my kids’ room as they read it.
A few years ago Almost Unschoolers talked about The Gingerbread Pirates, and I saw it and fell in love with the book. Of course her super fun Gingerbread Pirates craft might have helped.
Mooseltoe is such a fun silly book about moose who wants to create the perfect Christmas. Over at Lalymom they have some fun Mooseltoe activities.
I’ve a few other books in our Christmas books stack, but none of them are enduring favorites like these. I’m going to pull a few of those out this year to see if the kids have any real interest in them, or if perhaps I can cut down our book pile a little.
Do you have any Christmas books that I should add into our rotation?
This is part of Creating Christmas Traditions series come back tomorrow as I talk about Christmas giving traditions. For more Christmas posts check out iHomeschool Network’s 5 Days of Christmas series.
I’m going to have to look for Mooseltoe – that really looks cute. We hung the gingerbread pirate, and his friends, on the tree the other night…would have been a good time to have pulled out that book…if only I new where I unpacked the Christmas books to…
I know that feeling and we haven’t even moved recently. I swear we’re missing an entire box of Christmas decorations, including some Star Trek ones Jeff gave me for Christmas last year, and all the little things we usually put up on shelves.
Great list! Interestingly, there is not a lot of overlap with our collection (I just added Mortimer Christmas Manger this year). Daughter really loves Advent Storybook that we got when she was 3, and has a few other favorites. She is not really inclined to do crafts with books though.
My kids like crafts, but they don’t really have anything to do with the books… Or they did in my head, but not as it turns out when my kids do them.
Ooh several of these are new to me! Have you read “Christmas Is Here”? That is one of my favorites.
I haven’t heard of that one, I’ll have to see if I can get it. I just got 3 Swedish Christmas books (2 from the library and 1 bought) and I can’t wait to read and find out about those.
We really like Moostletoe – thanks for including links to activities!
We like some of those, especially Mortimer. 🙂 Did you see my Christmas book list?