These 30 Whimsical Holiday Story Books for Kids are going to become your family’s new favorite books to read during the festive holiday season. There will always be room on my bookshelf for the classic holiday books - ✔️ Grinch, ✔️Night Before and ✔️Rudolph. But once my daughters and I read the classics together a couple of times, I find that it is time to branch out and explore new holiday books together. We find ourselves getting lost in less-known but just as magical books that are filled with beautiful illustrations, enchanting characters and stories that are so endearing that our hearts simply cannot help but fall in love with these wonderful holiday books. Some of our favorites are classic tales retold in a new way or with beautiful new illustrations, some are classic songs that come to life on the pages of a book, while others are new holiday stories that I know will soon become classic holiday books in our home. Below you will find 30 of our favorite whimsical holiday ...
Book Club
14 Magical Holiday Story Books for Toddlers (great for ages 2-4)
These 14 Magical Holiday Story Books are a fun way for toddlers to experience the magic of the holiday season through books! Great for ages 2-4 years. I have read some of the books below so many times I am pretty sure I have them memorized. So if you see a tired mom wearing yoga pants and a crazy top bun reciting The Bear Stays Up while shopping at Target, you can go ahead and ignore her, she’s not entirely crazy;) These 14 Magical Holiday Books for Toddlers are my family’s favorites! Here’s why - They are short enough to hold a squirmy toddlers attention They are fun to read books with animals, blinking lights, fun pop-ups or overlays Some are song books (you may or may not thank me for those ones;) They are each magical in their own way So grab some of the books below, your little one, a cozy blanket and enjoy a book filled magical moment together. More Holiday Book and Gift Guide Posts That You Will Love: 20 Playful Holiday Board ...
20 Playful Holiday Board Books for Baby (great for ages 0-2)
These 20 Playful Holiday Board Books are a great way to introduce the magic of the season to baby! Reading holiday books with my girls is one of my all-time favorite holiday traditions! At the start of every holiday season, I bring down my extremely heavy plastic bin of holiday books from storage, I grab Elliette and Parker as well as thick cozy blanket, a couple mugs (with lids) of hot cocoa, and we snuggle up on our sofa to read all of the holiday books we have collected over the years. They both know the baby board books by heart and Elliette can now read them to us (heart melting). We read all of our holiday books from cover-to-cover, taking turns on who gets to pick the next book. Sharing time together while wrapped up in each others arms is perhaps the best tradition of all. Every year I gift the girls a couple of holiday books. I also pick up some holiday books at thrift stores or the Little Free Libraries around our neighborhood. Now our collection is quite large and ...
12 Children’s Story Books to Inspire Thankfulness (great for kids ages 0-6)
These 12 Children’s Story Books to Inspire Thankfulness are wonderful books to read to your children ages 0-6. Besides eating ourselves silly on turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving, is also a time to reflect on all that we are thankful for in our lives. Which also means it’s a great time to teach our children what thankfulness truly is. Getting young children to go from simply saying ‘thank you’ (which in itself can sometimes be a challenge) for kind acts, gifts or goodwill gestures to fully understanding the deep complexities of what it means to truly be thankful for someone or something takes a bit of time to digest and put into action. The 12 books below are my go-to books for this time of year to talk to my kids about being thankful. Our favorite books are age-appropriate, easy to read, have wonderful illustrations and are heartfelt in their messaging. I truly hope your family loves these books as much as my family does. Thanksgiving Books If you are ...
December Bookclub – 16 Magical Christmas Books for Baby + Toddler + Preschooler
The magic of Christmas seen through your child's eyes is definitely the best part of this time of year. Everything is possible for them - Flying reindeer, for sure! Talking elves, only if they have candy canes! Santa, who brings presents! Cookies, the more the merrier! Christmas lights, everywhere and anywhere! Snowy days, only if filled with hot chocolate! But where the magic really happens for them, is in books! Books that are filled with beautiful wintery scenes, images of Santa, lovable animal friends, fun songs to sing and gifts for the young and old. These 16 books, are our family favorites! Filled with great stories, beautiful illustrations and heartwarming tales. While, I left off some of the more classic books (which we still love), I hope you can find a few new family favorites in this list. So grab a warm mug of cocoa (yours with peppermint schnapps), a new Christmas book and your little one. It's time to create a little magic, who's with ...
Bookclub November – 12 Books on Emotions (for Toddlers + Little Kids)
Seriously, can toddlers and little kids have any more emotions??? Somedays/everyday it feels like it is a constant balancing act with their emotions between the line of happy/sad, frustrated/elated, crabby/silly with my girls on an hour-to-hour, day-to-day basis. Their emotions can be hard for them to interrupt, but they can also be beyond hard for me to deal with. This fall, emotions have been all over the place in our house. Ellie had a shaky start to the school year and we ended up switching schools 3 weeks into the year. As for Parker, she's 2, so extreme emotions are part of her everyday existence right now. One night, I was at my wits end with having to deal with their yo-yo emotions all day, so I handed the girls over to my hubby, got into my car, drove 2 blocks and then just sat there for a loooonnnnnggggg time trying to decompress. Something needed to change in our house because I was feeling very strung out. So, I called my mom and complained to her about ...
Bookclub August (10 Favorite Back-to-School Books for Toddlers + Preschoolers)
This months bookclub is all for the kiddos. It's back-to-school time and it's their time to shine (don't worry, I also listed some of my favorite books I have read in the past month down below in case you have some extra time for yourself;). It's back-to-school time for the kids and whatever age your kid is, school can come with a ton of mixed emotions - excitement, fear, anxiety, sense of unknown, just to name a few. Last year, when Ellie started preschool she really had no idea what to expect from it. Preschool (and play-school for younger toddlers) is such an abstract thought for most toddlers and young kids and they really have no idea what it is and why they are going. Since Ellie had stayed home with me since she was 18 months old, the thought of her going somewhere all day without me was both exhilarating and frightening for her. To calm her nerves, we read a ton of books about what exactly happened at school. I then used the books as a jumping-off-point to talk about ...
Bookclub July (Summer Cookbooks + Summer Books for Kids and You)
Okay, Okay, Okay! I got it! You want more books! I totally failed to get a bookclub together for June, and boy did you let me know about it! You wanted books to read, and you wanted them last month. You had plans to sit on a beach/dock/porch swing and read all June long, and my list of fun books was nowhere to be found. So after getting all of your frantic emails, I got to work. I had a couple of drinks, went online and ordered some books to read! Yikes! That's a lot of reading I have to do this month. So maybe having two glasses of wine and ordering a shit ton of books wasn't the wisest of plans. But now I will have some great book recommendations for you in the upcoming months ;) And just so you know, the apple doesn't fall that far from the tree! This is how Ellie's bed looks every morning when she gets up, even though everyday I put them all away for her. One day I will learn. This month, I am featuring summer cookbooks, summer books for the kids and ...
Monthly Bookclub – May
This months bookclub is all about Kids in the Kitchen! For the last couple of months, Ellie has been totally into 'helping' me in the kitchen. She pulls over her stool (which in turn, means Parker has to pull over her stool) and then it's action time. Ellie doesn't really care what we make and she is completely fine with "mix-a, mix-a, mix-a" flour and water together while I actually make the chocolate chip cookies. Parker is completely happy just hanging out and banging a few random cups around to annoy her sister;) But it is STRESSFUL having both of the girls at the counter, wanting to help cook but with the attention span of 5 minutes - tops! What kind of recipes can you make in 5 minutes? Not to mention, the kitchen is wrecked after they dart off to play with the next toy of the minute. But I want them in the kitchen with me. I want to spend time with them teaching them how to cook and bake. To show them how healthy food is also homemade food. Obviously, food is an ...
Monthly Bookclub – April
For the first time ever, I joined a bookclub! Which is funny because I LOVE to read, as I talk about below, I read so much it might almost be a problem. The thing is, I come from a long line of readers. My grandfather will read books upon books and has so many books in his study that it is borderline ridiculous, my mom will devour a book in a single sitting and I will stay up all night just because I have to find out what happens in the end. And fortunately/unfortunately this trait was passed down to Ellie. She has to have at least 10 books in her bed with her at all times and she will 'read' (she can't read yet, so she just flips through them and looks at the pictures) in her bed before she falls asleep. The book lovin' curse is living strong with us. But the fun thing about the bookclub I am in, besides getting together with other moms and drinking wine, is that I get to read books that I would never have read if left up to me. It has opened me up to other genres (umm hello there ...