We are big fans of Alice Schertle's Little Blue Truck. It's a mainstay in our nightly bedtime story rotation, so when I saw Little Blue Truck's Christmas, I knew I had to add it to our library. This delightful holiday story follows our favorite truck, Little Blue, as he delivers Christmas trees to all his barnyard friends. Children will love the familiarity of the characters and text (it's just not a farm book without animal sounds, am I right?), and will practice counting from 1-5 and back down again in Little Blue Truck's Christmas adventure. There's even a sparkly surprise on the final page - a twinkling Christmas tree with real lights!

The weather here in Philadelphia has been freezing lately, so we have been doing a lot of indoor play. Inspired by Little Blue, we made our own Christmas counting game. I simply cut green triangles and numbers 1-5 out of construction paper to make our own Christmas trees. My oldest helped glue the numbers on the trees (do you know HOW COOL a glue stick is to a 2 1/2 year old? Santa could leave nothing but glue sticks under the tree this year and it would be his BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!), and then I "planted" the trees all around the house. I would call out a number, and my son would then "pick" the tree that matched, and place it in his trusty Little Red Wagon. After he collected all the Christmas trees, we placed them in order from 1-5, and counted out the corresponding amount with Christmas balls. It was a great way to stay warm on a cold winter morning.