3 Tips for Holiday Homeschooling

It’s about time to get your holiday homeschooling in check! Thanksgiving has passed, and the Christmas season is upon us, which means things may get extra busy around the house. If you’re planning on homeschooling through the holidays, read on for some tips and tricks to make lessons engaging and interesting for your kids.

Study Holiday Units

To change things up from the regular homeschool curriculum, you can add some holiday themed units. Holiday themed units could include studying the history of all the normal holiday traditions and what countries they originated from.

You could also utilize this season for learning life skills. Showcase a practical life lesson such as budgeting. Some families plan out a whole year of budgeting in order to have money left over for holiday shopping. Teach your homeschoolers how to save for future events like buying a house and figuring out how much they can afford, while also showing them ways to budget for Christmas shopping in combination with other expenses they can relate to, like dinners out, as well as tips for being financially prepared for the new year. The complexity of this unit will have to be based on your homeschooler’s age, but it’s never too early to start teaching money skills to your kids.

A great unit for the young ones is winter weather changes. Teach them about how snow is formed and basic winter weather patterns in your area. Even if where you’re located doesn’t get snow, you can still teach them the essential science behind why leaves change color, how water turns to ice, and also the experience of life in colder climates.

Play Holiday Games & Create Crafts

If your favorite part of homeschooling is the games and crafts, then this next tip is for you. There are many crafting ideas and games you can incorporate into your homeschooling lesson plans. A fun winter craft is cutting up folded paper into snowflakes! This way your child can learn about how snowflakes are formed and then make some of their own. You can now use these as decorations for your home as well. Some other popular holiday crafts are making homemade ornaments, hot cocoa bombs, and advent calendars.

Once your crafts are done, you can incorporate some entertaining games. Holiday trivia is always a fun way to learn while making it enjoyable for your children. You could even create a Christmas scavenger hunt throughout the house looking for holiday themed items. With the new year coming right after Christmas, you could also add a future-thinking game to encourage your kids to think about what lies ahead. A new year comes with new beginnings so having your kids think about what they might want for themselves in the future can be beneficial.

To add some holiday cheer to your daily routine, you can play holiday music in the background as long as it’s not too distracting. Let your kids pick their favorite songs and maybe even practice caroling if you’re planning to have family over for Christmas. It’s like a homeschool chorus concert!

Practice Stress Relief

With winter months comes higher stress levels. Both you, the homeschool teacher, and your kids need to find ways to lower stress. Seasonal depression is a real thing no matter what age you are so working on your mental health is extremely important. There may be days you feel too run down to teach but need to keep your kids busy. Choose a holiday movie or documentary while you take care of yourself. This is also going to be a fun boost in your child’s day.

Encourage your kids to be open and honest with their feelings during the holidays. This time of year isn’t always cheerful for everyone, and it’s important to make sure your kids know they can talk about their feelings with you. Feel free to add in a unit specifically on different ways to lower stress levels and how to stay active and healthy. And where possible, keep the holiday learning fun!

End-of-year homeschooling is also a great time to create a homeschool bucket list for the new year. Discuss with your kids what lesson plans they liked the most, and the least, in order to gauge what you may want to do differently next year. This way each year you’ll have an improved curriculum and hopefully better engagement from your children.

These tips hopefully will help ease the transition into the busiest time of year, as well as delight your children with great curriculum and homeschool fun. Keeping things calm, cool, and collected is ideal and can be achieved with a little bit of work. What’s your favorite holiday school tradition? If you have one that your kids love, stick with it for years to come.