Homeschool Christmas Curriculum

We took a break from our typical homeschool schedule to celebrate Advent. I turned to the Peaceful Press Christmas Guide for inspiration. We continued to use our Math and Handwriting curriculums throughout the holiday season, but put everything else on hold. Even if you are not homeschooling the Peaceful Press Christmas Guide is a wonderful way to focus your Christmas activities.

The Christmas Guide lasts four weeks, a perfect fit for Advent. Each week you have a suggested list of books to read and related activities to complete. I requested all the books for the lessons from our library. Nearly all of them were available – yea! We even discovered some new favorites this season.

I’ve been asked a lot how I use this program for all three of the boys. Even my first grader loved doing the activities. I put him in more of a leadership role of reading things to the little ones. During letter activities he wrote all the words he could think of and we added some spelling words that started with the letters that the little ones were reading. I also added in some first reader books on similar subjects for him to read during quiet time.

Some of the projects are focused on teaching letters and literacy. I loved how hands-on these lessons were. Who wouldn’t love crushing candy canes to make a J!

My favorite activity was making our bird feeders. We tried a variety of feeders and hung them outside our windows. Since we are currently in Florida, we had lots of birds come visit us and sample our treats. Since our typical curriculum involves the study of different birds this activity led itself to that.

Watercolor is another big part of our regular Charlotte Mason curriculum, so we were excited to paint our own Christmas cards. We ended up doing this activity a few times because it was such a favorite. We gave some as cards and sent some out ourselves.

These ornaments were a bit of a disaster! So they turned out so lovely here but when we sent them to family the paint was not dry! I think because I bought the type that opened in the middle they never fully dried. I’m still puzzled because they sat in our house for several days without changing but when they arrived at their destinations the paint was all at the bottom of the globe and leaking out. Oops! Glad I had cute photos to show! We will try these again next year but with ones that open at the top to (hopefully) let the paint fully dry.

Part of the Christmas Guide focuses on brainstorming and making your own gifts. The kids love doing fruit and vegetable prints on paper and thought they would give it a try for gifts as well. The finished project was quite cute and well loved by their Aunts and Grandmothers.

I really enjoyed not feeling stressed about completing so many crafts. We would read a nice book about snow and then complete several activities related to snow and snowflakes. It was a fun way to do all those fun Christmas crafts in an organized way.

We even managed to sneak in some science. We learned all about crystals with some borax snowflakes. Our final snowflake was so huge! Martha Stewart says you can keep your snowflake but we let the boys hack ours apart and watch them dissolve in water.

We added in this fun T-shirt idea inspired by my Canadian bestie who likes to have her kids create their own t-shirts. Wearable Christmas Art is a perfect addition. We followed Larissa’s instructions from this post she wrote. All three shirts turned out so cute and were perfect for Christmas morning.

We also used this Lego Building Challenge. They had so many great creations but the Lego Christmas Tree had to be my favorite!

I loved taking a break from our normal schedule to just spend time getting ready for Christmas in so many fun ways. We will certainly do this again next year!