Real-life learning goes together with Christmas like sugar cookies and sprinkles! 

Put aside those everyday lesson plans and jump into the holiday with some festive and practical ways to learn...and in case you have any doubt, it absolutely counts as schooling!

Consider it a lesson in...

1. Writing
   Have your children help with all the lists (cookie ingredients, gifts, guests, wish lists). Have them write out invitations, address holiday cards, and write thank you notes.  Creatively write a holiday story. Send a holiday letter to a soldier.

2. Math
   Obviously, holiday baking in the kitchen is a way to use practical math.  Let’s take it further...Ask some questions: How many feet of stringed lights do we need to trim the house or tree? How many combined miles, average miles, & cost of gas per gallon does it take to get guests here for the holiday?  What are the time zones around the world and how far are we from them?

3. Science
   Discover how snowflakes are formed, how electricity gets into the lights on the tree, and how those tiny lightbulb circuits work. Test what temperature chocolate melts or what happens to sugar when you make hard-tack candy. Learn all about reindeer, camels, or donkeys. Study the North Star and constellations.

4. Art & Music
   Make your own wrapping paper or crochet a stocking. Wrap your doors like presents. Sing while you bake. Go caroling. Draw a nativity scene. Encourage family members to create one holiday decoration.

5. History
   Interview grandparents about what they remember from their childhood Christmases.  Look closely at the history around the birth of Jesus. Research St. Nicholas. Watch videos on how the holiday is celebrated around the world.

6. Love
   Take cookies to the elderly & leave some for your postal worker. Hand out warm mittens to someone who has none. Sincerely wish people, “Merry Christmas.”  Volunteer at a food pantry, adopt a kitten or puppy, or offer babysitting to a single mom.

Using practical ways to learn is not a hidden excuse to “not do school.”  Hold your head high (and sport a Santa hat), count it ALL as learning, and use your holiday activities as your lesson plans. 

Christmas is the celebration of the gift of Jesus. He is our rest and our peace...You know, “All is calm; All is bright?”  So, how do we approach homeschooling during this busy “Jingle Bell Rock” season and still achieve the restful place of “Silent night, holy night?”

I would like to offer a few thoughts as we approach the holiday:

1. Reduce your Expectations
   If you feel you must do schoolwork during the holiday season, minimize what you need to get done.  I always found it helpful to get just ONE thing done each day, maybe one math lesson, reading one chapter, or finishing one worksheet.  Just expect it to be a lot less than normal and be okay with that.

2. Protect the Essentials
   What daily and weekly habits keep your schooling “on the rails?”  Is it family reading time, breakfast devotionals, or your quiet cup of coffee before the kids tumble out of bed?  Keeping some structure in your day allows your family to handle the extra things that get placed on the calendar.

3. Limit the Events on the Calendar
   Parties, special services at church, ice skating, and cocoa with friends…the list is huge.  These wonderful things can leave us with little margin and focused on everything BUT the “reason for the season.” Very selectively choose the events that your family can handle.  You have limits.  Your kids have limits. Less is more.

4. Take a Break & Take a Look
   Your homeschool will benefit by purposely taking extended time off to renew, refresh, and reassess the schooling goals you set for the year. What is working and what is not? Take time to prepare your mind and your goals for a fresh start.

5. Keep it Simple
   Enjoy the season while schooling by not overcomplicating any of it.  Keep lessons, crafts, recipes, and decorating easy and manageable. Experience the rest that is found in simplicity.

Consider these tips to have a peaceful holiday while still having “room in the inn” for your homeschooling goals.

Thanksgiving is one of the easiest seasons to weave in some fantastic learning activities.  All the way from those paper bag turkey puppets to the entire saga of Squanto, there are just so many ways to learn and make the holiday more than a golden turkey and pumpkin pie.

Let’s have a look at a few ideas you might want to try. (Even if you can only manage to squeeze in ONE…. that is wonderful!)

1. Learn the history of the Pilgrims and Natives.
   The season is rich with noble characters, struggles, bravery, and even some tragic and sobering truths.  Dig into the stories, the people, and the reasons behind the actions of all of the main players. Discuss what you are learning around the dinner table or have your kids write a short paper or a simple paragraph to share with the family.

2. Make a craft, even if you are not that “crafty.”
   There are literally thousands of crafts you can find within a few minutes of searching online.  It always took the pressure off of me to choose the ones that I already had the simple supplies from around the house or in the yard.  Kids do not have to have the “latest and greatest” crafts that require an extra stop at the craft store. Unfussy things like colorful leaves, fallen branches, dried beans, glue, and finger paint can be the ingredients to meaningful times of creating.

3. Fill a basket or box full of library books about Thanksgiving.
   Add a few extra hours of reading to your week with family read-alouds, or by having your older kids read to the littles, or by listening to a book on tape or e-book while you run your errands. Choose different types of books to appease everyone’s interests…maybe a comical Thanksgiving joke book, a historical fiction about a colonial boy, a coloring or puzzle book, and a living history book that is laden with biographical information and facts.
   

4. Make a map and learn some Geography.
   Where exactly did the Mayflower set sail from and what was her sea route? Where did the colonists settle?  Buy a roll of brown craft paper, or cut open brown grocery bags and tape them together to form a large surface you can put on the kitchen or entry floor and start outlining the important places that tell the story of the season.  It doesn’t need to be perfect or perfectly to scale!  Older kids can do the harder outlining and labelling, and younger kids can color a whole lot of blue ocean.

5. Consider Thanksgiving a unit study!
   A unit study is pulling together a variety of activities and lessons around one main theme or topic. By the time you have done several crafts, a few read-alouds, a map, a history lesson, a poem, and thrown in a colonial or Native American recipe, you have created a unit study.  Well done!  This type of learning is not just fun, it caters to all learning styles and ages. Personally, unit studies were my very favorite type of learning.

Take advantage of this uniquely American holiday to enrich your family’s learning!

The countdowns have begun with the holiday wreaths, recipes, and events all around us.  In all of the hustle and hype, how can you get those carefully planned homeschooling lessons done and still have room for the extra “everything” that the holidays bring?

I found that regardless of how desperately I wanted to get that math lesson or read-aloud finished before the holiday break, it just didn’t happen.  Not because I did not plan or hope or try really hard, but because special things that come only once a year bumped my plans down the priority list.

It’s easy to end up feeling overwhelmed or anxious trying to juggle what feels like two separate sets of goals: enjoying the holidays and getting schooling done.

Over the next few weeks, I will offer some detailed ideas about how to make the holidays memorable AND still know that real learning and schooling are taking place.

But the first step is to think about the big picture with these suggestions:

1. Plan some time to rest and enjoy. Look at your time between now and the start of the new year and schedule some days that you will not be working on any lessons or checking off the “school boxes.” Go ahead…it is healthy and needed from the busy fall you have had.

2. Now go back and add a few more days than what you think you need. I have yet to schedule time off when at the end I did not say, “Boy, I wish I had just another day or two.”  Just schedule them now to give yourself and your family some added margin for the unplanned things that will happen. Unplanned things, both good and not so good, will happen.

3. Enjoy every minute of each of those days with no sense of guilt, no feelings of lack of accomplishment, and a large dose of freedom and thankfulness. I am sorry I did not follow this advice when I was a younger homeschooling mom.  I spent too much time being serious and not just loving and living in the moment. Your kids will thank you for your true joy in just “being” and not “doing”.

The science experiment made the floor sticky and didn’t work, there were tears during math, eye rolling during chores, and that overwhelming feeling of failure just won’t go away. Hard days happen. They seem to be part of the package that comes with homeschooling. So, how do we keep going? There are no easy answers, but here are a few ideas that may help. Know why you’re doing this.

Why did you choose to educate your children at home?

Listing your reasons for why you homeschool might begin with all the educational reasons: the individualized learning you have planned, the style of how you want to teach, or the special educational needs of your children. But don’t stop there. Your reasons probably include ideas about behavior, how time is spent, relationships, lifestyle, and calling. For those of you who are starting in the middle, having pulled your kids out of public school, your list might include a lot of what you don’t want. It might sound like, “I don’t want it to look like what we left.” That’s an OK place to start, but don’t stop there. Put some thought into your far-reaching reasons for what you DO want.

Write down your list of reasons so that when you have a difficult day you can remember why you’re doing this. Homeschooling is a countercultural decision, and swimming upstream is hard. Being intentional about reminding yourself why you are doing this will help you succeed. It helps to keep the big picture in view, so it doesn’t get lost in the messiness of today. I recommend that you write down your reasons, revisit them from time to time, and allow them to help you meet your goals.

Transitioning from public school, or just beginning to homeschool your littles for the first time can be challenging. If you’re new to this homeschooling adventure I want to encourage you.