Have you noticed how the holidays get busier and busier? You always have so much to do! Find time to homeschool through the holidays with joy!
Don’t forget to enter the giveaway at the bottom of this post!
How to Homeschool Through the Holidays
Concentrate on the Basics
During the holidays slow your homeschool down. There’s no reason to try to fit in history, science, art, music, languages, and grammar during December.
The world isn’t going to end if you don’t finish every intricate history project or science experiment this month. Just concentrate on keeping the kids reading, writing, and doing a bit of math. All will be fine!
For instance give your kids a basket of acceptable books and have them curl up in the living room and read for 30 minutes. Your kids can browse the various books, read Christmas stories, or spend the month working on one long book. It doesn’t matter!
What’s important is they sit and read for 30 minutes.
And include your preschoolers in the 30 minutes. Let them choose pictures books to look at while the older children read quietly.
For math, keep going at a lesson or even half a lesson a day. There’s no rush! If you’re feeling inspired, take math into the kitchen. Calculate how many batches you’re going to need to bake for the cookie exchange.
Divide cakes into fractions or figure out how much flour you will need for 3 batches of pumpkin bread. Math and cooking go hand-in-hand!
Remember to have your kids write everyday. They can create and write cards for soldiers stationed overseas or help you write Christmas letters for family and friends. Your kids can write long letters to Santa along with letters for lonely elderly in nursing homes. My daughter is currently writing short books for her friends!
Or use one of these 25 fun winter writing prompts to get the creative juices flowing.
It doesn’t matter what the kids are writing about, just that they write.
Add the Extra Subjects Carefully
Once you have the basic homeschool subjects flowing smoothly, try adding a few fun extra subjects in combination with the holidays.
Encourage the kids to be artistic and make homemade handprint wrapping paper. Grandma will enjoy the wrapping paper almost as much as she will the gift!
Play educational games such as Christmas Bingo. Make a family tradition of reading A Christmas Carol by Dickens together.
Work on your children’s fine motor skills with Christmas Tree Beading, or by making Christmas Wreath Cards to send out to family and friends this year!
And don’t forget about caroling. Kids love singing classic Christmas songs. So grab your kids and go caroling through the neighborhood. Everyone will have a wonderful time!
Homeschooling through the holidays doesn’t have to be an exhausting addition to the holiday craziness. This year change your regular routine and add a bit of Christmas cheer to your homeschool!
How do you homeschool through the holidays?
Christmas Blessings Giveaway!
The giving season is upon us and I have partnered with 22 other bloggers to give TWO families $500 Paypal cash in the 4th annual Christmas Blessings Giveaway!
Our hope is to bless two families this year by allowing them to fulfill their kids’ Christmas wishes, pay off a bill, or to help build up their nest egg. Whatever the money ends up being used for, our prayer is that it helps to lessen any financial burden and/or fills a specific need.
You can earn a lot of entries using the Rafflecopter form below. I know it can seem tedious and time consuming to go through all the entries, but isn’t a chance at $500 worth it? I think it is! Plus, if all of these generous bloggers didn’t participate, we wouldn’t have been able to have such big prizes! So I hope you will take the time to go through each entry. Who knows, maybe you will find some new blogs to follow.
The giveaway will run from Monday, November 13th through Wednesday, November 22nd (ends at 11:59pm EST). Winner will be notified by email shortly after the giveaway ends and will have 48 hours to respond to claim the prize or another winner will be drawn. You must have a Paypal account to win.
This would really help me give back to my family. They have spent a ton of money helping me with a PhD program, and then again on my wedding that my fiancé canceled at the last minute. I really feel like I owe them something.
I could use the cash to give my family a much needed vacation. We haven’t had one for quite some time. That would certainly be a blessing.
Winning this giveaway would help ease some of our debt! Thank you for the chance to win! 🙂
I family would be truly blessed to receive this prize. It would bless us with shoes for Sunday school.
The money would really help us with medical expenses we have now. It would be a blessing!
A couple of big turkeys and horderves for the holidays.
I live out of state so this would really help me get to visit my family for Christmas! My fiance and father are the only ones who live here. My father has been in the hospital for 2 weeks recently and the family would love to see him. It would be a great surprise and much needed time with family.
it will help cover Christmas gifts…Merry Christmas to you all
It would be a blessing to win because then I could get nice gifts for everyone for Christmas.
This will really help with Christmas. We live paycheck to paycheck so this is really nice. Thanks for the chance to win.
a turkey and ham for the the holiday feast.
We hadn’t had a real Christmas (with the tree, lots of food and candy etc) in years, so it would be great to win some cash and enjoy the holidays like others do…
This would help with medical bills. Hubby is in Occupational Therapy twice a week!
Oh my! This would give us a Christmas that we will otherwise not have. Thank you, thank you.
it will help with Christmas gifts!
I would buy holiday gifts for my family and i want to make happiness.
It will help make xmas extra special by being able to help others!!
To buy my granddaughters Christmas presents
It will pay for the Christmas dinner so my mom doesn’t have to
We could buy presents for the family. Thanks.
This would provide an enormous Holiday feast!
I would pay my monthly rent with the money…Thanks…
I would put it towards a fun family road trip.
it would give us a great christmas!
We have just settled back to Canada after 4 years of travelling together as a family, this will help make our little house a home.
It would lessen some of our out-of- pocket-expenses and be put towards making our holiday celebration more festive.
I will be starting a new job in January and could really use this money to purchase some nice clothes that I just can’t afford right now.
My husband was out of work for several months this year. He’s back to work now, but because we’re still trying to catch up on the bills that have piled up, we don’t have any extra money to spend on Christmas gifts for our three kids.
What a blessing this would be.
I would put it towards rent arrears,a bicycle for my daughter and a fun filled Christmas and new year meal.
helpful towards bills thats for sure thansk for the chance
Lots of food and lots of clothes and shoes.
It would really help with our move in a few weeks.
I would put it towards my family
This would be great for some fun projects and learning experiences.
This giveaway would really help with buying groceries for holiday festivities. This would be amazing!
This would be our whole budget for the holidays! Due to medical bills, and a change in home and jobs, this would be a huge blessing for us right now.
I could buy the curriculum that I want for my boys and help pay medical bills from my sons heart surgery
Winning this would enable me to either put something away for a holiday with my workaholic husband, or go towards paying off bills! It’d be wonderful either way!
Use it towards bills !
We would use it to start working on our backyard, a necessity with 6 boys!
It would pay off some bills and allow us to have a bit more comfort during the holidays.
Such great advice on homeschooling through the holidays in this post!
I would be blessed to get everyone in my family a gift if I won.
My husband and I were involved in an auto accident (not our fault), he suffered a fractured sternum and ribs, and I’m suffering through 5 major broken bones in my foot, along with 2 broke ribs, I’m riding around in a wheelchair and we haven’t been able to work since October. October/November is our busiest month for making money, but we haven’t this year, and my Granddaughter, who we care for, isn’t going to have a Christmas this year unless a miracle happens. Here is crossing fingers, and wishing for a miracle. 🙂
I would buy inspiring books for my 9 grandchildren.
I love this perspective on how to homeschool over the holidays in a joyful way! Thanks for the article! Also hope to win the give-away–it would help out our family, as we have no savings this year for gifts, etc. due to medical bills.