24 Books until Christmas

I have so many thing to blog about both from my class and with my own children but I was so excited to find a book Christmas countdown over at Reading Confetti that I just had to do it at my house.  I will blog about our great migration unit and my weekend away soon but I want to try and keep up with blogging about each of the books we do leading up to Christmas.

First I gathered all my Christmas books together, and I also checked out our local discount book store (and one small trip to Chapters).  Next I created a table on my computer with all the days leading up to Christmas.  I starting by matching books to any special days or special events (eg. getting our tree, making the gingerbread house, and church events), and then I filled in the rest  based on activities I wanted to do with each book and how much time we would have on different days.

I search my house for some sort of basket to put them all in and ending up with a small laundry basket.  It’s nothing special but the size was perfect.

You can guess from the book right at the front that today we started with The Elf on the Shelf.  I managed to pick one up when I was shopping last week and thought we would introduce an elf to our family this year.  We opened our box to read our book and meet our Elf.  Have much debate and deliberation we decided to name him Frankie.  Kaitlyn actually suggested Frankenstein but we convinced her that Frankie was more an Elf name.  I think the big thing will be trying to keep Eileen from touching him.  Kaitlyn is right into it and has already registered him online and spent some time checking out the website, so far she is not too much a fan of the site (not that kid friendly).  The big thing is going to be for Gord and I to remember to move him every night.

The girls were excited to hear there was a television show on the book but I think that we may have already missed it this year. If anyone knows of where I can find it online please let me know.  It may be a big help in getting Eileen excited about Frankie.

I was impressed tonight that this adventure of ours seems to be a priority for Gord.  I told him that we were starting our book countdown tonight and I would like it to be something we do together as much as possible and he made sure to schedule his meeting tonight later so that he would be here for our book.

Tomorrow night is a reindeer book and a craft with Gramma.  Gord and I have his staff party but I am going to try and read the book before I leave.  If not I think it will be O.K. for Gramma and Grampa to participate in our little adventure.