Christmas Homeschooling

In this post we will discuss Christmas homeschooling. Scroll to the bottom for the activity pages link. This post may include affiliate links.

This is a unique time of year; one that seems overwhelming at times, especially if we are homeschooling. There are so many delightful distractions, aren’t there?

Just think how hard it would be for a child to do his schoolwork when he sits a few feet from a glorious Christmas tree pregnant with presents. There is no way he could be able to concentrate on math and English, is there?

Many eons ago (I’ve been homeschooling for over three decades), I decided that instead of fighting the distractedness, I would go with it!

And so, each December we “binge” Christmas. We call it “Christmas School.”

Just how should one go about it?

Here are some ideas:

Have one special Christmas project a week for the four weeks after Thanksgiving. You could use each Friday for this. Here is the list of activities:

Week 1: Crafts and decorations. This is where you could do some salt dough, or polymer clay, or any other type of craft. You could do the craft to make decorations for the house, or you could simply decorate with what you have on hand or different things you accumulate. Just make your entire house your canvas and see what sort of merry atmosphere you can create together!

Week 2: Create gifts for others. This could range from drawing Christmas cards to filming a short play.

Week 3: Baking. Now, this can be more complicated and extensive (and exhausting) than a military campaign, am I right? But there are ways to minimize the mess and the chaos (these tricks were discovered via many catastrophes):

• Decide what you want to bake and gather the recipes in a binder at the beginning of the month.

• Make a list of extras based on your recipe list and buy at the beginning (maybe even before or just after Thanksgiving).

• In the weeks before your baking day, mix up one dough a week.

• If you are recovering from having a baby, an illness, moving, etc., make it easy on yourself. You can purchase already baked cookies, ready-made icing, and decorate these! Or, you could buy refrigerated cookie dough and bake and decorate. Or…you could do something simple with chocolate melts and pretzels, etc.

Week 4: Play games and go caroling. This is a great way to wrap up the season, and a way to keep kids happy and distracted as they wait for the big day.

Take time each day to do a bit of “Christmas Academics.”

• Practice singing a Christmas carols for a few minutes each morning.
• Read the true Christmas account.
• Read some Christmas stories, such as O Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, or The Story of the Other Wiseman by Henry Van Dyke, or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John by Pearl S. Buck. (We discovered these treasures and more by reading Joe Wheeler’s book series, Christmas in My Heart.)
• Watch a kazillion Christmas movies/cartoons and narrate them, draw about them, etc.
• Go “binging” and do some notebooking pages.

And here is my gift to you:

FREE Christmas Activity Pages!

These are low-stress, open-ended, and easy on the eyes. You can print them out, three-hole punch them, put them in a binder, etc. and have them handy for when your kids need a little something “settling.”

Here are some pics:

Click below for the pdf:

Christmas Homeschool Open-ended Notebooking Pages

And…when you are done with the activity pages, you could turn them into a family Christmas letter! You simply scan/photograph your different projects and creations, type in the results of the writing projects you’ve undertaken (including the ones suggested in the above activity pages), add in some family photos, and put them all into a template on Canva, and then save as a pdf and send it out via email (you could also do a printed version to give physically to some folks).

Our family did a newsletter for years and we have many happy memories because of it. This is different from the typical “brag” letters we are tempted to send (and dread reading).

The idea is to have lots of fun, but still make it COUNT towards academics (and officials, and relatives, and your own state of mind).

If you need more information and inspiration, I have done a little video you might enjoy here: