Holidays are a HUGE deal in our home, no matter which one it is! We look forward to Passover and Resurrection Day, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, you name it!
But two of our most beloved holidays are Thanksgiving and Christmas! Probably because they really are an entire season, and not just one solitary day, but we really do it up BIG during this time!
My kids start begging for Thanksgiving “trial recipes” about a month or even two before, and I’m happy to oblige! We love trying new foods, or even just a different spin on some of our classics, as well as trying out some new baked treat recipes!
We’ve also been known to blast some Christmas music LOOOOONNNNGGGG before Thanksgiving Day, despite our official family “rule” that we don’t play it until after the big turkey dinner! But sometimes we just can’t help ourselves! Christmas music just does something to ya, you know what I mean?
During this particular season, our everyday homeschooling routine also looks a little different, as we enjoy the sights and sounds (and smells!) of this glorious time of year!
In this edition of the Homeschooling Series, I’m sharing some of the ways we learn during this festive season. We certainly don’t do everything on this list every year, but over the years, we have explored lots of seasonal activities from an academic point of view, and have learned in a much more enjoyable way than simply reading about dates and times through a textbook.
- Cooking + Baking
There is so much learning that can be done in the kitchen, holidays or not, but this particular time of year is a fun way to include the kids in the fun family traditions of the season since there is usually PLENTY of feasting! As we say in our house, “Many hands make light work!”
Whether your kids are littles or middles, there is something for everyone to do in the kitchen, from measuring, pouring, and mixing…to cutting, chopping, and slicing!
My own kiddos love using their own kitchen tools, which are designed for aspiring young chefs to practice basic kitchen skills….and Mamas can rest easy knowing they can’t chop their fingers off!
These simple tasks open up great opportunities for reinforcing basic concepts with your littles:
- counting
- measuring
- comparative terms like larger/smaller
- simple addition
- fine motor skills
Your middles will also get their fair share of learning opportunities with more complex ideas like fractions or doubling recipes(or tripling sometimes for our large family gatherings!). You can also teach the science behind using exact measurements in baking recipes, or share about your family’s heritage if you’re using an old family recipe!
Even your teens will be excited to get involved as well when you assign them a recipe they can tackle all on their own!
My kids are constantly wanting to help me in the kitchen, and yours will too when they see how much fun it can be! (It won’t even feel like learning, but it counts as school! Win, win!)
This is also an awesome team-building project as everyone practices working together! They will take pride in knowing they helped make something special for the holidays! Plus, your kids get bragging rights when you show up to Grandma’s house and they get to tell her all about their fun in the kitchen!
If you’re not a huge fan of cooking and would like some simple and fun kid-friendly recipes, check out Cooking Around the Calendar with Kids! This is a cute book filled with recipes for all the seasons and holidays, with simple-to-follow instructions, plus safety tips and ideas for opportunities to bless friends and family with their creations!
- Read Seasonal Books
Reading is already fun this time of year with all the cozy blankets and cups of hot cocoa (or coffee for Mamas!). A fun tradition we have is choosing some Thanksgiving and Christmas themed stories to read throughout this season!
This activity is one of my favorites because it includes all of us! We all gather in the living room and snuggle in for a new story!
I try to choose a chapter book, or at least a bit longer of a storybook that we read in smaller sections together. This helps the littles stay interested, and also helps my middles take in the information in smaller pieces at a time for better memory retention.
We love to go to our local library and check the New and Seasonal section to see if there are any we haven’t read yet.
Some of our favorite places to look for free or cheap new books are:
- Library
- Grammy’s house (there’s always something new to find on those shelves!)
- Thrift stores
- Yard sales
- Facebook Marketplace (there are also some great homeschool resale pages if you search your area!)
The options are literally endless for this particular activity as there are countless books available on these particular themes! It also covers multiple areas of academic study such as history, science, art, handwriting if they choose to write reports on certain books, and of course the obvious one, reading!
- Acts of Kindness
Thanksgiving and Christmas are great times to get the kids involved in serving loved ones and their community! It could be as simple as making some baked treats for some shut-ins at your church, or plugging into a greater ministry outreach in your church or community.
Whether you choose to serve solo as a family or connect with a larger outreach, this teaches your children tremendous love for others and community service as they notice needs in the world around them!
In past years, we have been involved in both individual family projects, like sending handmade greeting cards with some baked treats to loved ones far away! Your kids will love designing and making one-of-a kind creations, and learning to love others in the process!
One particular outreach program in which we have served for a few years now is Operation Christmas Child by Samaritan Purse Ministries. My kids love picking out the items from their lists, packing the boxes, delivering them to the drop-off locations, and feeling good about helping kids just like them get a fun surprise for Christmas!
Make it a family project by talking with your kids about ways your family can get involved! They can come up with some pretty awesome suggestions!
- Arts + Crafts
Speaking of handmade creations…
My kids absolutely LOVE craft projects at my house, no matter what season! But there’s just something about tracing their hands on construction paper and decorating with feathers and googly eyes and paint and markers to make their own beautiful “turkey” that just gets us in the holiday spirit!
Pinterest is my go-to for all things crafty, and there are tons of seasonal ideas for fun projects to do with kids! From preschool level to older grades, you can find a bagillion projects to try out, as well as some fun, seasonal-themed worksheets, word searches, and other fun “learning” pages that will reinforce their regular schooling in a fun and creative way!
One of our favorite family projects around Christmastime is to have a gingerbread house contest! My husband and I love to watch how creative (and competitive!) our kids get!
- Advent Calendars
These are super fun to do, and a fun way for toddlers and preschoolers to learn their numbers! It’s also a great way to incorporate the Reason for the Season by choosing ones with Bible verses for each day!
You can get the entire family interacting by taking turns reading the verse or quote of the day, and even Dad can be included if you do it as a family devotion time in the evenings!
We love to use the Jesse Tree idea(you can find tons of ideas on Pinterest), and in years past, have done a small artificial tree where we hang the day’s ornament on the small tree. The kids love taking turns with this one, and seeing the tree decorated more each day is a fun and festive way to enjoy the season!
Happy Home Fairy has this ADORABLE free printable ABC Advent ornament activity that is absolutely perfect for those preschoolers to practice their letters in a fun way! Plus each ornament will reinforce a Scripture verse for each day!
Another fun way we like to do Advent Calendars is to make little bags with special treats and gifts inside that your child can open each day leading up to Christmas! Such a fun activity for your kids to look forward to each day!
This one is super cute and comes with all the cards with Scripture references to read, the small Kraft bags that you can reuse each year, and the clips if you want to display them!
Want to reinforce your little’s Alphabet while learning about Christmas? Check out my adorable Christmas ABC flash cards, beautifully designed with Scripture correlating with each letter, available in KJV and ESV versions!
- Nature Studies
Yes, even in the colder months, you can find lots to study in the great outdoors! Fun ways to incorporate this can include:
- observe and collect different colors and varieties of leaves
- have your kids trace/draw their nature findings in a notebook(bonus points if they can identify each)
- do a study on how leaves change their colors during the fall season
- take your family to cut down your own Christmas tree
- do a study on snowflake composition and designs(did you know not a single one is exactly alike?)
- do some family research on why the fall and winter seasons are essential for gardening, crop fields, and plants
My kids can come up with the most interesting questions, and I’m sure yours do as well! These can be the start of some pretty interesting research topics! Have fun with it, and learn together as a family! These will be some of the best memories you will make!
- Christmas Carols Study
I’m personally a big fan of all the classic Christmas carols we sing during this festive season, and looking deeper into the history of the composers as well as studying the words to these well-known classics can be super interesting!
This can be a great way to involve the whole family by assigning different tasks to different kids, such as researching the composer’s life, drawing pictures related to the song, even practicing the music if any of your children play a musical instrument.
With so many different carols to choose from, this can definitely be a season-long study! In our home, we like to choose one to two carols a week, so we can typically cover a total of 10-12 carols between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
Another idea to go along with this, and a fun way to incorporate community service into this particular subject, is to go caroling as a family! Perhaps you can organize a fun evening with some of your extended family or some friends, and visit a neighborhood or two. Plus, this is also another way to share some of those baked treats you’ve been working on with the kids! 😉
Well, that’s it for today!
I hope this encouraged you to enjoy the upcoming holiday season in a fun and creative way, while learning at the same time! It can give a wonderful reprieve from the mundane routine of homeschooling, and begin some great new family traditions!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these! Which ones will you be incorporating this season? What activities would you add to this list? Just comment below!