Do you ever feel like the holidays fly by without fitting any meaningful family time in? I have in my mind all the things I want to do as a family for the holiday season, but all of a sudden January hits and we didn’t get to any of it.

A few years ago, Matt and I talked and decided to do something about it. We decided to be more intentional about the holidays. I knew if we were going to fit more into our schedule, I had to find ideas that were simple and easy. I started trying to find ways to incorporate more quality family time in during the holiday season. We have several things now that we do as a family each year that I want to share over the next few weeks. Here we go!

Idea #1: Christmas Reading Basket

Create a Christmas reading basket. I got this idea two years from Sarah Mackenzie and her podcast, “The Read-Aloud Revival.” I love this idea! We created a book basket for the month of December. I like it so much, we might continue it into next year.

Place a large basket somewhere visible and fill it with Christmas books. I went to my library and checked out all the best Christmas and winter books I could find! Lots of our books are by Jan Brett. We just love her books, and she has several winter and Christmas books! Whenever it’s time to read, I choose one child to go pick out a book from the basket and we get to read it together as a family.

Finding Extra Time to Read

We try to find extra time each day to read. We might read the book before bedtime, after dinner at the table, in the morning after breakfast, in the car as we travel somewhere, or at some other random time. I love the time we spend reading a good book together as a family. Sometimes the kids sit and color and listen as I read. Other times, they just sit and look at the pictures.

We have enjoyed so many great Christmas books together as a family! It’s an easy way to fit in extra family time. Everybody enjoys it and it only takes a few minutes to pull off and absolutely no prep time! That’s a win in my book.