It’s never too early to be thinking about Christmas, especially about the reason my family celebrates Christmas—celebrating the birth of a king. Every year I like to add special Christmas books to our Christmas book box. One of our newer books is A Christmas Prayer by Amy Parker.
A Christmas Prayer by Amy Parker
Summary: A little child talks about how every aspect of the nativity story is a gift from God. From Gabriel to baby Jesus, they are each a precious Christmas gift to us from God.
The book has simple text with the repeating phrase, “Thank you, God, for __________ Your precious Christmas gift”. My little ones were able to repeat that phrase after a couple of pages. I appreciated that this book allowed us to talk about how each of the characters in our nativity set were real and each were a gift from God that helped tell the story of the best gift of all– Jesus.
Book Extensions for A Christmas Prayer
- Gather a toddler/preschool friendly nativity and pull out each character when they are mentioned in the book.
After reading this book we pulled out our Nativity Sensory Box that we made last year. As the girls searched for the pieces, we reviewed what the book said about that person.
2. Print out the Nativity Characters Booklet. Have your child “read” the names of each person in the nativity story.
3. Print out the Christmas Bottle Cap letters matching activity. I have included a set of lower case and upper case alphabet cards, but you can use any letter tiles you might have around the house. When I originally made this activity, I cut out the circles and adhered to chipboard circles. You could also glue on to milk caps. Have your child find the matching bottle cap letter and place it on the scripture mat. Read the word and then read the scripture. This is a fun way to incorporate some Christmas scripture memorization.
4. Pick one or two coloring pages or activities from the Ultimate List of Nativity Ideas.

More Christmas Book Activities and Ideas
Check out our Christmas Books page for a listing of books we’ve covered through the years.
I love the idea of having so many different Christmas books. I need to work on gathering some for next year.
I also absolutely love the idea of a nativity sensory box. What a great idea.
Blessings
Honey
Do you have a list of the books that you included in your Christmas Book Book? Love your selection so far!
Thanks,
Caterina
I want ALL of the books you've shared so far.