Screen-Free Holiday Moments: Simple Read-Aloud Activities for Busy Families
Research shows that parents have less time than ever to read to their children. Check out these five cozy and easy holiday reading rituals to boost your child’s literacy and buck the trend.
7 December, 2025 / Written by STORYVOR Editors
Photo by hello aesthe on Unsplash
A wise person once said that the happiest moments in life are simply “You and the people you love, alive, together”. That’s doubly true for the holidays. You don’t need grand plans or complicated productions to create holiday magic. Sometimes it’s enough to share stories, step away from the overstimulation of screens, and build cozy rituals that your children will remember for years to come.
We'd love to encourage building some small storytelling rituals into your holidays this year . . . and not just because we love literacy and that’s what we talk about here at Storyvor. But because literacy is connection. Literacy is expressing yourself. It’s sharing who you are with the people you care about. It’s partaking in the world around you through listening and understanding the stories of others. Stories connect. Reading aloud connects. Ideally, the holidays connect, too. It’s the perfect time to build rituals of all kinds, so why not also build in a few that boost your child’s skills in connecting to others?
We know the holidays can be frantic and chaotic. We know families are busier than ever. Which is why our tips below aren’t complicated. They don’t have to take much time. Raising lifelong readers means building small habits, and reinforcing positive, happy associations with books and stories. It can happen in in-between moments, and in the middle of everyday activities.
Here are five simple, screen-free things you can do to connect, build memories, strengthen your child’s literacy, all at once.
1. Put together a reading basket
Keep a basket of seasonal books in easy-to-grab places (by the couch, in the car, in the kitchen) so stories naturally slip into your day. Go to the library to collect this basket of goodies, visit a bookstore, or go on a walk to a little free library in your neighborhood, and let your children choose the books they want to bring home.
Then try:
One poem while waiting for dinner;
One short chapter read aloud over breakfast;
One evening of “everyone chooses a book and reads quietly together.”
2. Go on a Storytelling Walk
Try heading out into the neighborhood or to a park. Tell your children a story as you go, or invite them to tell you a story. Encourage them to take whatever turns they want, and incorporate the world around them into the story. Ask questions like “Who do you think lives in that house? What do you think is at the end of that road? Should we go find out, and you tell me what you think we’ll discover?” By shaping the walk around the story, you invite your children to reflect on the world around them and how they want to navigate it. Storytelling walks also instill the idea that we’re all part of our own stories, making big and small decisions every day, asking questions and following our curiosity to shape the course of our journeys.
3. Organize a “Bake and Read” session
Maybe you’re planning to bake cookies anyway this holiday season. Or build a gingerbread house? Or cook an elaborate Christmas dinner? Food — and the preparing of food — is the perfect opportunity for sharing stories.
Try:
Organizing a cookie baking session and reading to your children while they wait for their cookies to bake. A warm kitchen, the smell of cookies baking, and a good storybook = the perfect combination.
Decorate gingerbread houses and invite your children to invent stories about theirs as they work. Try questions like “Who lives in this gingerbread house? What are they up to?” as they work. Note how telling stories will likely shape how they decorate their houses, showing how thinking things through and expressing them shapes details and real-life decisions.
Choose a recipe from a cookbook or magazine, or let your child choose. Encourage your children to cook the recipe with you, and let them take turns reading the steps and explaining what to do. (It’s a great way to illustrate the agency that reading brings to every day life, and how it allows us to create beautiful and delicious things!)
Photo by Curated Lifestyle on Unsplash
4. Decorating read-alouds
Tree-decorating can be both fun and chaotic. This year, try to bring stories in by:
Reading cozy holiday stories aloud while your children decorate;
Asking your child to choose a decoration (like a bell, a snowflake, or a star) and tell an imagined story about it;
Organizing a collective story: Someone starts, maybe even by reading the first few pages of a written story. Then, as you decorate, everyone switches off telling what happens next. Really, anything can happen in a collective story, often resulting in silliness and hilarity.
5. Create cozy read-aloud rituals
Even in the busiest season, ending the day with a short read-aloud can create grounding, comforting family traditions.
Try:
Making hot chocolate or a special tea every night before reading aloud, creating an extra cozy space with glowing holidays lights, and set the atmosphere;
Choosing one holiday classic (or brand new release) for nightly chapter-by-chapter reading;
Passing the book around so each person reads a page, or everyone reads one chapter an evening;
Rituals like this can turn reading into something children look forward to year after year.
The gift of reading together
The holidays are joyful, but they also tend to be extremely busy. Still, they’re full of little in-between moments — waiting for cookies to bake, bundling up for the car ride, or winding down after a long day of festivities — that are perfect for building traditions, and creating lasting memories around stories and reading.
Let us know which ones you tried!
