A New Take on an Old Tradition

Every year since the girls were born, we have been giving them a nice hardbound book every Christmas and every birthday.  Now with 4 girls, the oldest being 20, that's alot of books.  This year I borrowed an idea from Colleen over at teachingheartmom that sounded interesting to me.  In order to keep the interest in books going from year to year she wraps her children's seasonal books and only brings them out during that season/holiday.  After digging the mounds of CHRISTmas "stuff" out this weekend, I thought I would give it a try.  Here's just a portion of all of the Christmas books that we own...

I wasn't sure how the "youngers" would react to this idea.  They are 9 and 11 and I was hoping hadn't outgrown all the mystery :).  So I brought Sadie over and had her see what she thought:

She was a little suspicious...

"I don't want to ruin the surprise but I think I know what's in here."

Well, she was partially right ~ the books from the basement.  But what she didn't know is that it is their Christmas books from all the years going way back.  I told them that each night they could unwrap one for their before-bed-reading and they thought it was a great idea!

This would also be a great way to add some mystery AND the love of reading to your Advent calendar for the year.  A teacher could even use this in her classroom to count down the days till Christmas break...after all we all need a little more excitement this time of year right? ;)