Holidays, Homeschool and December Adventures 

December has come and gone quickly. This was our first Christmas since moving home to Maine, and although everything definitely didn’t go according to plan, it was wonderful none the less.

Since being a mom the month of December and the days leading up to Christmas are some of my favorites. Every year I have the loud and emotion stirring thought that I only get so many of these seasons with my kids, especially when they are young. I remind myself of this and try to enjoy them as much as possible. Here’s a little snapshot of our December 2022.

Advent Calendar Countdown 🗓

My 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. 

The Advent Calendar is something I’ve been doing with Anika since she was only two years old; however, it became increasingly difficult to do when she was in school full time. Buuuuttttt, now that we are 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.

Some highlights this year…

Welcoming the Winter Solstice ❄️

I love living in New England, love having four seasons and even love the coziness of winter. I appreciate the cold temperatures that force me to slow down and the tranquility of a white blanketed landscape. What I do not love however, is how short the days gets and the lack of sunlight. Normally it gets to me. Since moving home to Maine this year I knew I was going to need to make an attitude shift. So during those darkest days of the year I decided to lean into it, embrace the dark and cold. Acceptance for what it was and I allowed myself to turn into the skid. 

At 3 PM when the sun was real low in the sky, instead of feeling depressed, I shifted my mindset. We’d stop doing what we we were doing and activate cozy mode. I’d pop some popcorn, make some hot chocolate and for a week and a half we watched Christmas movies. We focused on watching all the Home Alone movies. Did you know there are six possible variations of them? They definitely aren’t all great, but my kids didn’t care. Shifting this mindset made me start to look forward to the end of the day and the darkness.

On the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, we celebrated with our Christmas lights drive and Frosty’s from Wendy’s. It was magical. Well it was magical until Jake decided he needed to pee so badly twenty minutes into the drive and with no public restroom in sight Jamie had to help him with this in a random parking lot. #magicofparenthood But then it was magical again after that.

Holiday Homeschooling

I’ve learned this year that Holiday homeschooling is the BEST. Besides incorporating our advent calendar into the school day it was also fun to tie in all the holiday themed things. For example, my kids love the Home Alone movies. They are particularly a big fan of the trap scenes at the end.  I used this love to teach them a little physics. Watching clips from the movie we talked a little about different types of energy. They spotted examples from those clips of the trap scenes. We also briefly discussed simple machines and some examples of those in the trap scenes. Then the kids were tasked with creating their own “battle plan map” and create traps around the house. They were like, for real? We get to do this? If your kids love Home Alone also here’s the lesson plan I created for this.

I also made them a Home Alone Scavenger that you can find here. I used quotes from the movies and adorable clipart to send them running all around the house. The clues lead them to a surprise at the end.

And the best part of homeschooling around the holidays…you know that time in school when everyone is kind of done? When no one really wants to do anything but think about Christmas? I knew this exist both for the student and the teacher as I was once a student and a school counselor, so I’ve seen it first hand on both sides. I know how much actually happens that week before break.

When we hit that point in December I decided it was time for our Christmas break to begin. My husband was on vacation and we were ready too. We took a break from Rightstart Math and Fundations, but the cool part about this was learning did not stop. It just easily flowed into our days and holiday activities instead of me forcing it in a curriculum driven way.

We discovered these two new Christmas Books this year that we LOVED.

Change of Christmas Celebration Plans

A few days before Christmas Anika got sick, life fever of 104 type sick. It dragged on for several days. Thankfully she was much better for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but not 100 percent better. Since we didn’t want to expose anyone outside of our home to whatever bug she had, we scrapped our plans for Christmas celebrations on the actual holiday. Although this was a bummer, since this was our first Christmas home in Maine, it worked out ok and gave us all something to look forward to in the future. There is still plenty of Christmas left to celebrate.

New Year’s Celebration 🥳

I think this New Year’s eve was my favorite of all time. I don’t have one photo of it but it looked like this.

Everyone picked a frozen appetizer of some sort that we baked in the oven. Pretzels, corn dogs, coconut Shrimp, gyoza and crab rangoon where on the menu. Real healthy stuff.🤪

We made fun sugar plum fairy drinks. We went and watched a performance of The Nutcracker earlier in the month and they were selling blue concoctions made of sprite, gatorade and grenadine for 10.00. I told the kids I would happily recreate this at home for them instead of spending the 20.00 dollars there and New Years Eve seemed like the perfect time for this.

We snuggled on the couch and binged watch Tiny House Nation, a show all four of us currently loved.

The kids got to eat an unlimited amount of candy from their stockings.

It was just relaxed, cozy and wonderful. At one point Anika looked at me while we were snuggling and watching tv and said in the sweetest little voice, I find this very satisfying. I also was content.