The two books in this story time are "The Great Santa Stakeout" by Betsy Bird and "Bear Stays Up For Christmas" by Karma Wilson

Action Song: Up On The Housetop

Upon on the housetop, reindeer pause (point up to ceiling)

Out jumps good old Santa Clause (jump)

Down through the chimney with lots of toys ( point down)

All for the little ones, Christmas joys (point to each other)

Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn't go? (Make Santa belly and shrug shoulders)

Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn't go? (Make Santa belly and shrug shoulders)

Up one the housetop, click, click, click (clap hands)

Down through the chimeny with good St. Nick (touch ground)

credit: Storytime Katie

Book: The Great Santa Stakeout by Betsy Bird

This was an adaption of  the "Down At The Corner Bakery Shop" poem. I don't recall where I originally stumbled across the poem, but here it is on My Montessori Journey blog.

Mine goes like this:

Over by the Christmas tree, it was getting pretty late.

There were (#) colored cookies sitting on a plate.

Along came (name), hungry for a treat,

And s/he picked the (color) one to take home and eat.

 Then, there were no more cookies to leave for Santa so the kids can bring them back up.

Poem: A Chubby Little Snowman 

A chubby little snowman

Had a carrot nose.

Along came a bunny, 

And what do you suppose?

That hungry little bunny

looking for his lunch

ate the snowman's nose

with a munch, munch, munch.

 Actions for this one include: pointing to your nose, making a bunny with 2 fingers and having it jump, pretending to eat a carrot. 

This one led into the next story well since there was a bunny in it.

Book: Bear Stays Up For Christmas

Song: Jingle Bells 

For this one, we played the song over a bluetooth speaker and rang our bells and danced to the music. Our jingle bells are attached to fabric and can be velcro-ed to your wrist.

Another option for Jingle Bells is this . . .

Song: Jingle Bells

(As you sing, clap your hands. We did this with bells around our wrists so we clapped but jingled too..)

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

Then we stopped clapping and started ringing our bells, keeping the tune.

Jingle bells real fast, jingle bells real slow, jingle bells real high, jingle bells real low.

Jingle bells to the left, jingle bells to the right, jingle bells behind your back, jingle bells in plain sight.

Stop ringing and resume clapping.

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

This is a little display I put up on an empty shelf. Nothing ground-breaking, but thought I'd drop some pictures here.

Truth be told, I haven't read all these books on display. How I wrote my blurbs was a combination of pulling from Goodreads reviews and publisher description on the title page. 

If you're curious, the font I used is called Children Book Kids Font from FontMeme.com.

 This game was designed for a Boxcar Children book spotlight but ended up being its own thing.

For this game, players align cars in order based on the symbol. So the locomotive has a yellow diamond, the next car should begin with a yellow diamond.

As you can see, the car that begins with a yellow diamond ends with a blue arrow. You would need to find the car with the blue arrow next and so on and so on.

Here's a template I made if you want to use my train cars! 

The shapes were had drawn and traced onto scraps of paper.

After I had cut my train cars and attached my shapes and wheels, I laminated these guys. 

This was because I knew I wanted to put them on the magnet board and felt they needed an extra layer of stability. 

After they were cut out from the lamination film, I just stuck some magnets on them and they were ready to go!