December is a great time to de-stress your home school by lightening up on the academics and shifting the focus to holiday arts, music, baking, and read-alouds.
Instead of dragging through the end of the semester, each December we have a special month in our homeschool. I let a few things drop off my homeschool mental to-do list (such as science, history, or whatever is bogging us down), and instead we shift our focus to holiday-related activities and lifeskills such as baking and making. December becomes a time when we can celebrate the flexibility of homeschooling and lighten up a little.
December Curriculum Focus Overview
Our curriculum focus for December is a little different every year. Some of the things we've focused on over the years include:
Family music recital
Baking lots of cookies to share
Advent crafts
Homemade Christmas presents
Family reading of A Christmas Carol script
Winter and Christmas-themed read-alouds
Winter and Christmas movies
I don't require my children to participate in these activities, but nonetheless they generally both choose to participate in all of these to varying degrees.
Family Music Recital
The children, my mom, and I choose a few Christmas songs to play together. Throughout the month, we practice individually and together, as much as we each desire to. The week of Christmas, we perform the songs together.
The instruments we've used for our Christmas recital include:
Glockenspiel, jingle bells, and dulcimer are great to use for younger kids!
Baking Lots of Cookies to Share
We don't bake cookies very often throughout the year, but December is cookie season! We enjoy baking a few different types of cookies and then delivering them to friends and neighbors. Baking is a great life skill to cultivate and it's also a fun way for littles to get some exposure to fractions and measuring.
These are some of our favorite cookie recipes to make for the holidays:
Advent Crafts
Advent crafts are a fun way to count down the days until Christmas, with one activity for each day from December 1st through 24th. When they were younger, my kids especially enjoyed doing the Advent Colouring Pages from Activity Village, such as the Christmas train and village, which can be cut out and made into a scene.
The Activity Village Advent resources used to be free, but are no longer. Some other free options I have found include the following:
24 creative homemade advent calendars @ thecraftycrow.net
25 Advent coloring pages @ kids-n-fun.com
20 amazing Advent calendars to make @ thecraftycrow.net
Commonly, my kids would be really excited about Advent crafts for the first couple weeks of December, and then their interest fizzled out. This's totally okay, and I just let them participate as much (or as little) as they wanted to.
Homemade Christmas Presents
Throughout the month, we enjoy making homemade Christmas presents for family and friends. Some of the presents we've made include Christmas tree ornaments, artwork, hard lotion, food treats, and stuffed animals. This is a sweet way to shift the focus of Christmas away from ourselves and onto what we can make for others.
Family Reading of A Christmas Carol Script
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is a wonderful little story about the real meaning of Christmas. My family enjoys doing a reading of A Christmas Carol script for part of our Christmas festivities.
Sometimes, this has been as simple as us all reading the script together on Christmas Eve; other times, it has turned into more of a project where we have put on a little play with figurines, costumes, and sound effects.
Winter and Christmas-Themed Read-Alouds
Throughout the month of December, we read-aloud books which have an emphasis on winter and Christmas. Over the years, some of our favorites have included:
The Child's Christmas by Evelyn Sharp - This is a delightful book written over a hundred years ago. It tells little stories of an English family's preparations for Christmas, as well as their holidays including Christmas, New Year's, and Twelfth Night.
Christmas stories from the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder - My children have both loved all of the Little House books, so in the week leading up to Christmas I like to read-aloud the Christmas chapters from each of the books in chronological order.
The Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore - As a child, every year my mother would read The Night Before Christmas to me and my brother on Christmas Eve. I loved this tradition so much that I have carried it forward with my own children.
The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola - This is the story of Lucida and her family's struggles one Christmas season when the mother is ill. Lucida finds a way to still make Christmas special and meaningful. My children love this story.
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg - My children love this story of the Christmas train and journey to the North Pole.
The Christmas Coat: Memories of My Sioux Childhood by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve - This book illustrates the true spirit of Christmas. It tells of a girl whose winter coat is too small, yet she must rely on the charity of others to fill the need. She learns not to put her own needs ahead of others'.
Brave Irene by William Steig - This story of perseverance and courage is a lovely book to read during the winter holidays.
One Winter's Day by M. Christina Butler - This sweet little picture book about giving has been was a favorite of mu children when they were younger.
The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll - My son, especially, loved this picture book about teamwork.
A Certain Small Shepherd by Rebecca Caudill - This is a moving, sweet Christmas story about a family in Appalachia during a blizzard.
The Christmas Barn by C.L. Davis - This sweet chapter book is set in Appalachia in the 1930's.
Christmas Movies for Family Movie Night
For our weekly Family Movie Nights in December, we watch winter and Christmas movies. Some of our favorites include the following:
A Great Way to End the Year
By shifting the focus in our homeschool for December, we are able to sweetly enjoy the last month of the year together. Instead of feeling like we are dragging our feet or going through the motions, December has become a cherished month of homeschooling for our family.
Do you have any December homeschool traditions to share?
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Here are comments from when this was originally published on my old blog.