Our tree is up and we’re ready for Christmas—all except that whole wrapping and shopping part. We’re in the mood, though, and as we usually do, we’re carrying over the Christmas fun into our school work!
We have a few places we like to visit each year that I try to do during the week. Pretty much everyone else is trying to do all of their special holiday activities on the weekends and the ability to avoid the crowds is a major advantage of homeschooling! I love not having to wait in huge lines or push through crowds while trying to keep track of both kids, especially at this time of year.
If you want to tie the holidays into your schoolwork, there are so many ideas out there! This year we are going to learn about Hanukkah with a unit on The Trees of the Dancing Goats and make some treats for the animals after we read Night Tree. We’re also going to bring in our current artist, Grandma Moses, with a copy of The Night Before Christmas that uses her paintings. Homeschool Share has many different unit studies and printables available if you’re looking for a way to do something Christmas-y and still learn!
If you want to help your children develop some other skills, you might consider working on some homemade gifts. You could teach them to sew some simple handwarmers or finger puppets—felt is especially forgiving for people (like me) who are not excellent (or barely competent, in my case) with a sewing machine. I have a board on Pinterest of gifts to make and I am planning on roping my kids into some of them to force me to follow through! Homemade gifts are a fun way to learn some new skills and can help out kids who would like to give gifts to many people but don’t necessarily have the money to go buy gifts.
And of course, it’s okay to just have fun! I usually try to work in a craft or two each week leading up to Christmas. We also read tons of books and watch movies and have Christmas music on Pandora pretty much all day. Did I mention food? Yeah, we make a lot of fun food, too!
Whatever you decide to do, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and that you take the time to enjoy it!