Last year I fell in love with Holiday Homeschool. As a stay at home mom the days leading up to Christmas were always some of my favorites with my kids. When Anika was in public school I felt like we missed out on a lot of time and the opportunity to do the traditions I wanted to do with her, but once we started homeschooling it seamlessly fit not only our life, but also our school day, which I’ve come to the realization are one and the same. Here are some of the things we did for holiday homeschool during the month of December 2023.
Language Arts
A Christmas Carol
We used Little World Wanderers A Christmas Carol Unit Study.
We listened to the audio book version of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens read by Tim Curry on Audible.
After finishing the book we watched both A Muppet Christmas Carol and A Mickey Christmas Carol and did a compare and contrast of the movies from the original book.
We then went to a local theater and watched a live production of the play.
Holiday Newsletter
The kids created their own Holiday Newsletter highlighting some of their favorite things about 2023. They used Canva to do this.
They each…
🎁 Picked four events from the year that were meaningful to them.
🎄Picked photos to include
🎁 Created their own clip art
🎄Designed the layout and put everything together
Children’s Christmas Book
We read LOTS of Holiday Picture Books. Books from our collection that we add to every year as well as a BIG stack from the library. My two favorite new to us books we discovered this year were Merry Christmas Mr. Mouse, by Caralyn Buehner and Miss Mary’s Christmas Mittens by Trinka Hakes Noble.
After reading all of these books we discussed the importance of holiday stories and the story of A Christmas Carol in particular. How incredible it is they can be past down year to year and still stay so relevant. We talked about how A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, The Grinch 1957 and Charlie Brown Christmas 1965 and how all three of these stories and their messages stay timeless and are appreciated by generation after generation.
The kids then each wrote their own children’s Christmas books and illustrated them. Their stories were both inspired by a discovery in our garage of a rodent friend. We learned we had a rat that had made his home in our garage and gotten into some of the holiday candy I had hidden out there, but he only went after the tube filled with Hershey kisses that had a Grinch head topping it. The kids named him the Christmas Rat and proceeded to write stories inspired by his adventures in our garage. Don’t worry, we are pretty sure we have taken care of the Christmas Rat. He is no longer in our garage and has moved onto other adventures.
Here is a page from each of their books. I plan to have these bound up and we are going to add them to our Christmas book collection that we take out with our holiday decorations each year.
Math
Holiday Shopping
Using the free Waldock Way Holiday Shopping Project Template to help us the kids were given a budget, created a list of people they wanted to buy for and some ideas of things they might want to buy. We went to the store with the list and they calculated how much money they were spending along the way. I also taught them how to do things like look for coupons online and price match items. I’m pretty sure the cashier a Target thought it was absolutely adorable when a six year old boy said, “I’d like to price match that with your online price.”
Christmas Countdown Boxes
Our families favorite part of December is our advent calendar countdown. We get a little jolt of that Christmas morning excitement every day during the month of December. As part of homeschool this year we decided to create our own boxes to sell on etsy and at a local craft fair. It was a great introduction to business for the kids. Thank you so much to those who supported them and purchased a box! I cannot begin to express how excited they were anytime an Etsy order went through.
We continued using our Singapore Math curriculum throughout the holidays also.
Social Studies
Charles Dickens, History of A Christmas Carol and Victorian Christmas Traditions
We learned about all three of these things using, The Little World Wanderers A Christmas Carol Unit Study
We also Watched Xavier Riddle Episode 5, Season 3 on PBS Kids. You can sign up for a free week long trial, cancel it before the week is up and not have to pay anything.
Science
We Watch Videos and Read Books about the Winter Solstice. Favorites included…
To celebrate on the December 21st, 2023, the day of the actual Winter Solstice this year we went to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Aglow in Boothbay.
Art
Made salt dough and created salt dough creations
Made paintings on canvas to give to people as Christmas Gifts
Illustrated the Holiday Children’s Books the kids wrote.
Watched A Christmas Carol Play.
Listened to Lots of Christmas Music
I love this, thank you for sharing! Great work as always making the most of homeschooling!
Thank you!
Wow! ❤Love this! Every part of it is Superb! Very evident the children will delight in being life long learners! OUTSTANDING job, teachers! 😄
Thank you!
I bought one of the Advent boxes and my youngest granddaughters loved it! They are 2 and 5 and thought it was great. As part of my Christmas decorations I put out paintings another granddaughter made me when she was 4 and 6. She’s now 13. I LOVE having the paintings so I hope the paintings your children made go into holiday decoration boxes to be treasured for years to come.
Thank you so much for buying a box and we are very happy to hear they loved it!! I love that you still have your granddaughters paintings and I bet she does too. Our paintings will definitely be making it into our decoration bins and will be proudly displayed for many years.
Lovely pictures. Amazing job at home schooling.
Thank you!