Mmmmmm - it is all well and good me telling you to go outside and ponder its glory when it is pi**ing down with rain. Last night, we had the usual gale force winds and rough seas keeping us awake. Honestly, it sounds as if there is a referee in the room blowing a whistle all night - reminder to self - when I come across a few spare thousand get windows replaced in bedroom!
Each season I pluck a few books off the bookshelves that are relevant and put them in a basket in the hope that the children will pick one up and have a quick read or flick through. It works a treat. Even I get to have a little look through. Some of the pictures and little stories are so warming and joyous. I sometimes think it is rather wonderful to live in a child's world. There is nothing stopping us popping back in time once in a while and escaping the everday drudgery of cleaning, credit crunch and general crap of daily life!
All these books were bought in charity shops (50p to £1.49). The only exception was The Christmas Mystery which was new and I needed to start on 1 December. However, since then I have bought a copy on ebay for 10p with £1.50 p&p and there are other copies available! Where possible I have done links to Amazon in case you might want to order anything.
Here are some of our favourites:-
Some are about the story of Jesus and some are about Father Christmas. There is a blurry line between God, Jesus and Father Christmas and their powers to be able to see everything and perform miracles in children's eyes!!
This is from A Baby in Bethlehem by Sally Owen and John Haysom.
This gorgeous picture is from A Book of Christmas by Tasha Tudor, which is a lovely 3 dimensional book.
This is from Watch Out for Father Christmas by Kate Veale.
No Christmas would be complete without The Jolly Christmas Postman by Janet and Allan Ahlberg.
This is 'It's Santa' by Nicola Baxter. This is a really jolly recount with 3d surprises of the Santa story.
Jostein Gaarder - The Christmas Mystery - is for older readers, but my children aged between 4 - 9 love having a chapter of this read to them every night whilst cuddling the kittens (any excuse). Ginny over at the Flour Loft is doing a similar read each night.
This little book - The Snowflake by Paul Gallico is so beautiful. It is about the life of a snowflake and her purpose in life.
I leave you with two things - Firstly, a question - does anyone know where I can get little white candles from to replace the ones above! Secondly, a few words from the above book ......
As dawn began to come to the dark world through which Snowflake was tumbling on her long journey to the earth, the sky turned first the blue colour of steel, then grey, then pearl, and looking at herself as she tumbled over and over, fragile and airy as the wind that blew her, Snowflake knew that she was beautiful.