How and Why to Continue Doing School Through the Holidays With 3 Easy Tips for Homeschoolers

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Are you a homeschool mom wondering just how on earth you can continue homeschooling through the holiday season? Or maybe you are questioning whether you should even try to keep those homeschool lessons going? Well, in true veteran homeschool-mom fashion, I have some thoughts on that!

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Read on for how and why you should continue to do school through the holidays.

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Long before I was a homeschool mom, I was a classroom teacher and one of the biggest challenges I experienced every year was figuring out ways to push through the academic curriculum while wading through the holiday season filled with parties, programs and plays. It was NOT An easy balance to find. Sway one way too much and my First Graders wouldn’t be able to read/write or add/subtract. Sway too far the other way and parents complained about “missing out on all the fun parts of school.” {I do not miss that type of pressure at all!}

I never dreamed that it would be just as hard as a homeschool mom to ensure that academics did not totally fly out the window as soon as mid-October hit. 

Between the amazing array of field trips that seem to abound every fall {apple picking, pumpkin patches, picnics in the park…} and parties to celebrate the various holidays {Caramel Apple Decorating, Thanksgiving Feasts, Gingerbread House Building…} having a full week of schooling at home seems impossible. Throw in at least one play, program or musical and it’s a wonder we get any teaching done at all from October through December.  

And, before you utter, “but learning happens all the time, no matter where you are and what you are doing” let me remind you that, while that is true, it’s not THAT simple. I agree that learning CAN happen anywhere. I believe that learning CAN occur at anytime.  

BUT unless your kids are going to grow up to be professional Pilgrims or toy-making elves {no offense to those professions, ha ha,} they will need to know how to read and write. If they want to survive in the world of shopping and eating out, they will need to be able to multiply and divide. If they want to go to college, they will need to know how to formulate a scientific hypothesis and write clearly structured essays. And those things cannot be taught if we stop focusing on academics for the last 10 weeks of every single calendar year.

So, that’s the WHY.

The bigger question is HOW can we continue to homeschool during this busy holiday season? Read on for three simple tips!

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But, before I share those three tips, let me give you the biggest tip of all. You don’t need to change anything about your schooling over the holidays. You can just keep doing your lessons as you were in August and September and October. You get to decide what you do. So, if you want to shut out all of the noise created with holiday printables, Christmas crafts, winter wonderland woo woo projects, go for it! Do not worry what others are doing. Just do you!

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How and Why to Continue Doing School Through the Holidays

TIP ONE: Plan Ahead!

• Wrap up 25 Christmas books, start on December 1st and read one book per day until Christmas.

• Gather several winter chapter books and books filled with winter poems in advance and have them on-hand for both individualized reading but also group read-alouds.

• Pick fun but purposeful unit studies to use all winter long.

• Assign copywork of the lines your kid needs to know for the Christmas play.

• Take paper and pencils to the store when shopping for gifts and ask your kids to find the total before you go to the register.

• Better yet, give them a budget and let them figure it all out!

• Use inexpensive printable easy-to-implement lessons, such as this FREE Christmas Stockings Math and Literacy Pack or the real story of Christmas, that are different enough to be thought of as fun by your kids but educational enough to be considered purposeful by you.

• Choose crafts that teach skills your kids actually need and not just because they are cute.

• Create an Advent activity for the month of December that is both meaningful and academic. There are dozens of advent calendar activities for kids available online.

• If your family does the Elf on the Shelf, be an Elf over-achiever and make at least some of the elf’s daily antics centered around academics. These Elf-on-the-Shelf writing prompts would be perfect for that! {If you are an anti-elfer like me, be sure to read this hilarious post, Four Reasons I Wish Every Elf Would Fly Back to the Frozen Tundra and Never Return.}

• Take the time not only to go Christmas caroling but to also learn the words of and the meaning behind classic carols before you go. This Hymn Study Pack for Angels We Have Heard on High will do just that! Or for something shorter and sillier, check out the series of Carol Literacy Packs including Jingle Bells, Rudolph and more.

None of that advanced planning will take away from the fun and joyful experiences of the holidays. But it does make the activities more meaningful and purposeful and they keep your kids focused on their academics while still having fun!

TIP TWO: Get creative!

• Ask your kids to group the ornaments into types {shapes, sizes, colors, etc} and graph them before you put them on the tree. {Or, later in the season, have them count the number of pine needles that have fallen off before they vacuum, ha ha.}  

• Rewrite the day’s math assignment to include word problems about gifts, stockings and candy canes.

• Say “we will practice fractions while baking cookies today” and make your younger kids reduce those fractions while the older kids need to find equivalent choices.

• Replace the spelling words in your kid’s workbook with words including “sleigh, tradition, mistletoe”.

• Teach formal letter-writing by having your kids write “thank you” letters. This free Customizable Thank You Card Collection would help with that.

• Switch out your lunch-time read aloud book for something holiday related. For a great historical fiction Christmas chapter book appropriate for all ages, check out the Imagination Station’s Danger on a Silent Night. And then take your fun new read aloud to the next level and get a resource to accompany it here. This Novel Study Pack is filled with vocab studies, puzzles and more!

• Explore the science of snow and the chemistry of instant hot-cocoa.

• Define the laws of physics that allow graham crackers to be held up in a vertical position with icing while building gingerbread houses.

Yes, it will take longer to be creative. Yes, it will feel more like work than if you simply hope they’ll learn through osmosis while baking cookies, decorating trees and building gingerbread houses.  But, the extra time and effort will be worth it. They’ll be doing actual academics while enjoying a variety of fun activities!

TIP THREE: Be Diligent!

Acknowledge that your kids’ academics fall solely on you. Yes, that’s a lot of pressure but it’s what we signed up for when we decided to homeschool. So, remain diligent during the holiday season.  

Be diligent about your time.

• It’s okay to miss out on a field trip or two.

• It’s okay to say “no” to the choir director at church.

• It’s okay to turn down the opportunity to organize the co-op Christmas party.

Be diligent about goals for your homeschool.

• Stick to your daily routines.

• Stick to your lesson plans.

• Stick to your curriculum.

• Do not put that carefully-chosen curriculum on the shelf “until January when things settle down.”

Be diligent by acknowledging that in January, you will be hit with Valentine’s Day, Easter and end-of-the-year craziness.  

Be diligent in continuing to educate your kids during this busy holiday season.

Be diligent now so you are not caught off-guard in May and then decide to scrap the last 10 chapters of math.  

I know this sounds difficult and time-consuming but, if you PLAN AHEAD and BE CREATIVE, it’ll be easy to BE DILIGENT!

And if you do all three, you can easily slip in loads of fun activities and memory-making!

How and Why to Continue Doing School Through the Holidays