Yes, we're full of Thanksgiving celebrations, and gearing up for Christmas, Hanukkah and winter celebrations. I have a few requests this holiday time:
* include books for your children as you think about holiday gifts.
While books might not grab their attention right away, they have lasting power. At times, a book seems expensive at $15 - $20, but then I take a minute to think about the amount of time and pleasure we get from a book. My older daughters are both reading Rick Riordan's Lost Hero
right now, so that $10 has been spread across two children for hours and hours of reading time. Compare that to a movie ($50 for the family, easily), and books seem like bargains!* include books in your gifts to charities.
Our neighborhood does a charity drive every winter for a local women's shelter or the local children's hospital. Gifts of children's books can be especially meaningful for children struggling at this time of year. Books can help pass the time, they can help you escape in your mind, and they can bring laughter at hard times. I pass on books we're no longer using, and include some new popular books that I know kids will love.
* if you shop on Amazon, please first visit Great Kid Books and then click over on a link to Amazon.
Great Kid Books gets a small percentage of every sale - money that helps us buy the newest books to review and share with kids and readers. Anything purchased from Amazon
counts here - from candles
to Kindles
, toothbrushes
to toys
, not just books.Thank you for your support, and for helping your children find wonderful things to feed their imagination.
My mother started a tradition that I continue with my own family. On Christmas Eve we opened one gift and it was always a book - my mother called it our Christmas book. It was the last activity of the night, after all the other special things we had planned, we sat down with hot chocolate or cider in front of the tree and watched as each person opened their book. We passed them around and then took our own book off to bed with us. I still remember some of those books, they did have lasting power. Now, when I shop for my Christmas books I look for books that my kids might not pick out on their own but have good reviews or recommendations, or classics that I think they will love but don't know it yet. Books make great gifts!
ReplyDeleteI love this tradition - what a beautiful idea. My mother started a tradition that is a scavenger hunt for the children after dinner on Christmas Eve. But I might suggest a way she incorporates this. Thank you so much for sharing!
ReplyDelete