Published on December 17, 2024
Reading with your child is known to help calm them, unlock cognitive and developmental benefits, inspire their creativity and imagination, and help them to sleep at the end of a long day.
And with the Christmas period introducing all sorts of exciting adventures that mess with their routine, being able to keep up their bedtime routine with a story may quickly become the only thing that settles them.
But that doesn’t mean you have to cut the excitement of Christmas from their bedtime reading. In fact, what better topic to send them into a magical dreamland than the festive season?!
Here are some of the best reads to add to your list this Christmas…
The Gruffalo and Stick Man have become children’s classics, starting life as books and turning into televised dramas created by the BBC. The magic of these stories, their immersive worlds, and their unique characters, make them excellent stories for the Christmas season.
Christmas 2024 sees the release of BBC animation The Tiddler, based on another of Julia Donaldson’s books.
Whether you introduce your child to the animations or reserved the stories for bedtime reading, these books and the plethora of merchandise that match them are perfect for some Christmas imagination.
The rhyming couplets of this Christmas classic makes it a must-read during the festive season. The traditional Christmas story, the poetry in the words, and the twists and tales in the story offer something for readers of all ages.
TOP TIP: Save this story for 24th December, for some extra special Christmas Eve reading.
A children’s version of the birth of Christ story, which combines the story itself with lots of pictures – bringing the birth of Jesus to life in a visual way that’s easy to follow and read together.
Having a basic and early understanding of this story and the events of Christ’s birth will introduce your child to the origin of Christmas as a celebration and where it came from.
A book written by the author of The Wizard of Oz, you won’t be surprised by the creativity and immersion of this story. The writer, L Frank Baum, takes the reader back in time to the origin of Santa Claus as the world’s most famous Christmas elf, as he selects the best reindeer to pull his sleigh and learns how to slide down chimneys to leave gifts for all the children.
Notice how lots of the recommended Christmas reading books are stemmed in traditional stories and whimsical tales?
This one is no different, introducing the whole family to the Twelve Days of Christmas song with beautiful images to match.
A few other books to add to your Christmas reading list for the 2024 festive season include:
· The Boy Who Slept Through Christmas
· The Christmasaurus
· The Christmas Promise
· Diary of a Christmas Elf
If you’re struggling to maintain a consistent bedtime routine during the Christmas period, then know that you’re not alone.
Not only does Christmas bring with it seasonal excitement, but it also means that nurseries are closed and that routines are thrown into disarray with the various bank holidays and family celebrations.
Maintaining a routine for the benefit of your child means being flexible and realistic about what you can keep up with and what you can’t. Regular naptimes may be more of a challenge, but sticking with a bedtime story is both doable and can be an opportunity to relax at the end of even the most overstimulating day.
Some tips to help maintain this bedtime story routine include:
· Letting your child choose the story that they would like to read
· Picking somewhere quiet to read together, to help calm them after the excitement of festive activities
· Combine reading time with talking about your day and what they enjoyed doing
We don’t need to tell you that Christmas is a time when, for most of us, routine goes out of the window. But that doesn’t mean you need to lose the peace of bedtime reading – in fact, all the more reason to make that bedtime story a priority!
We hope this list inspires you and offers a few ideas of stories you hadn’t considered! We can’t wait to hear which books you and your child read over Christmas when they return to nursery in January!
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