Our Favorite Toddler Christmas Books
Holidays can quickly bring on feelings of overwhelm, and more rush than you thought was possible. A mantra that I find helpful during this time (and just during life in general) is LESS IS MORE.
What if you took the time you were going to spend searching for that perfect deal on that perfect toy or the time creating the picture perfect advent calendar that insta told you would take 5 minutes but is taking you 5 days and costing you your sanity, and you instead invited your little one to read with you?
Here are a few of our go to Christmas books that can help you bring on intentional connection time with your little ones this season. The most important part is the enjoyment you share together.
You don’t need to read all the words, you don’t even need to read all the pages. Take the pressure that you feel to do it perfectly and throw it out the window.
If you happen to have any of these books or pick them up at the library, amazon, a bookstore, the little free library down the street, or wherever you get books, here are a couple ideas for each book we list:
Pause for “up” in the repetitive part of the book “the bear stays UP”. Find the animal on each page and make the animal sound with the corresponding animal. What sound do badgers make? Moles? Get creative.
2. Santa Rex:
This book is a great place to start if you’re having a hard time not reading all the words in books. There are a limited number of words on each page, and simple, beautiful illustrations. Use the pictures, and the well intentioned, but clumsy, accident prone dinosaurs to use exclamatory words like: uh oh! Oh no!, ahhh!, OOoOooo!
Use the repetition and familiar tune to your advantage in this one and pause for animal sounds. If you’re really feeling festive give it your best opera voice when reading/singing. Because clearly we all have a song inside our hearts (whether or not it sounds good when we are singing it..)
Snowmen at Night is the original and is a goodie for sure. For a “spin off” (do we call books spin offs?), Snowmen at Christmas does not disappoint. The snowmen are busy doing all the things for Christmas and this is a great book for modeling verbs like “he is sledding!”, “she is eating”, “they are dancing”.
This is a two for one deal because they are both a great jumping off point for modeling exclamatory words that are fun and motivating for your construction vehicle loving toddler. See: “vvvvvvrrr!”, “thunk-crunch”, and “scrreeecchh!” as lovely examples for not your average words to model.
We hope that this post is the friendly reminder you need that the biggest gift this holiday season is quality time spent together. Let us know how it goes, fam.
