With Advent quickly approaching, I’m trying to get all of my Christmastime ducks in a row. I’ve spent far too much time during the past few years scrambling during December that the season becomes less fun and more stressed. This year, I’m hoping to have most of my chores done ahead of time so that I can soak in the peace, joy, and magic of the season.
One thing I’ve recently done is pulled all my Christmas books out of our book storage to get ready for our Advent calendar. For the second year in a row, we are going to do a book-a-day Advent calendar.
The Simplest Advent Calendar for Our Montessori Home
To do this, I take all of the Christmas books we have and wrap them and write a number on the front. The kids then take turns opening the book that corresponds to the day.
Mostly the choices are random, but if I know we have something special happening then I will pick specific books for specific days. For example, we always buy and decorate our tree the third weekend of Advent, so that third Sunday the book will be “Pick a Pine Tree.”
The kids really enjoyed this tradition last year and asked for it again this year. I love that it didn’t really require any purchases since we just used the books we had on hand. I did replace one board book this year with a new book just since the bigger kids won’t be into the board book and Teddy is just a bit too little for it.
Advent Book Calendar Ideas
The books we will use this year are (in no particular order):
- The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: An Appalachian Story
- This Is the Stable
- The Three Wise Men: A Christmas Story
- Refuge
- Christmas in Noisy Village
- Alfie's Christmas
- Lucy & Tom at Christmas
- Pick a Pine Tree
- The Christmas Story
- Henry and Mudge and a Very Merry Christmas
- Nativity
- The Nativity
- Little Christmas Tree
- 'Twas the Evening of Christmas
- The Night Before Christmas (Little Golden Book)
- Story of Christmas
- The Night Before Christmas
- Night Tree
- Peter and Lotta's Christmas
- Silent Night
- The Little Drummer Boy
- Henry And Mudge In The Sparkle Days
- An Orange for Frankie
- Polar Express
2023 Update: We still love this simple, easy advent calendar tradition and use it every year. Over the years, I have occasionally switched up some of the books that we wrap to keep it interesting for the kids and myself. Some newer titles that we have added to our collection include:
If you want to do this for your Advent celebration, remember that it took many years for me to collect this many books. Use your local library and thrift stores to fill in the gaps if you need more!
Have you done a book a day for advent? Do you have favorite Montessori friendly Christmas books?
Have you done a book a day for advent? Do you have favorite Montessori friendly Christmas books?
