The holiday season is a whirlwind of activity—festive decorations, preparation, family gatherings, and special events throughout the season. For homeschooling families, this time can be both magical and hectic. How do you maintain educational studies while being present in the joy of the season? How do you set aside time to focus on the meaning of the holidays while keeping everything else in balance? How can you ensure your children continue to learn and grow without sacrificing the holiday spirit?

In this blog post I share how we balance academics during the holiday season, plus ideas to make the season special and memorable for my family.

In this blog post:  

• How we do holidays in our homeschool
• What holiday curriculum are we using this year?
• 6 tips for incorporating a holiday unit study in your homeschool
• Favorite homeschool holiday activities
• Holiday unit studies from Treehouse Schoolhouse

How we do holidays in our homeschool

As we approach each holiday, I enjoy breaking up our homeschool studies and allowing time to focus on the upcoming season, whether Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter. 

Personally, I believe these times of year can be pivotal if we allow time to learn about their origins and focus on what is in Scripture. During Thanksgiving, we integrate Bible readings about gratitude. At Christmas, we revisit the nativity story. For Easter, I teach my children about the Resurrection. I love how homeschooling allows these important lessons to flow into other learning through art, poetry, copywork, reading aloud, and hands-on activities like crafts and baking. This is a time of year my children and I cherish as we gather together and repeat lessons and learn new ones, too. 

Related: 10 Ideas for Learning Opportunities through Holiday Activities

I allow time for holiday studies by intentionally pausing some of our other academic work. We don’t try to do everything during the holiday season. As we make time for our holiday lessons, we will take a break from Treehouse Nature Study and subjects that overlap with the holiday curriculum, like history. My older children will continue their independent lessons, like math and grammar, and we will still work through our family read-aloud from Treehouse Book Club. Pausing some of our subjects keeps me and my children from being spread too thin or cramming in too much. It also allows us the flexibility to dive deep into special unit studies. Because we homeschool year-round, we have plenty of time for days off of school before returning to our planned curriculum.

Related: Benefits of Year-Round Homeschooling

During busy holiday seasons, I also allow time to take a break. If we need time to prepare for the holiday or are feeling tired after all of the celebrations, I schedule a few days or even a week off of school to allow time to rest and recover before getting back into the swing of things.

Related: 13 Ways to Beat the Winter Homeschool Blues

The last thing we tend to do during the holidays is practice what I call “life school.” I like to invite my children into different responsibilities of our home. They may use math skills to multiply a recipe for Thanksgiving, or copy ingredients from a recipe onto a grocery list. They may help prepare our house for guests, or make homemade gifts for family and friends. There are so many things we can teach our children during the holidays outside of academic studies, and I think this is a perfect time and place for those lessons.

Related: 100 Life Skills to Intentionally Teach Your Children

Overall, when we incorporate holiday unit studies into our family’s daily rhythm, we usually add a holiday curriculum in place of something that we can pick back up after the holiday to allow room to be present during the holiday season. 

What holiday studies are we using this year?

This year, we plan to use A Treasured Thanksgiving in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Before Christmas, we will use elements from both A Connected Christmas and A Connected Christmas: Around the World. This will be our first year using A Connected Christmas: Around the World, but we have traditions from A Connected Christmas that we still want to carry on this year as well, so I plan to pull elements from both.

6 tips for incorporating a holiday unit study in your homeschool

1. Set an intention. Decide what is most important to you as you look over the holiday season and focus on how the curriculum fits into that. For example, you could use the holiday study to focus on the Bible stories or the craft projects, adding in more from the curriculum as you feel up to it. The holiday unit studies are rich and robust no matter how many of the activities you are able to complete.
2. Gather books and supplies in advance. We all know a little advance planning can go a long way during the holidays. Print materials, gather supplies, and reserve or purchase books that coordinate with your study.
3. Designate time for your study. Grab your homeschool planner and block out the days or weeks you plan to add in the unit study.
4. Slow down and savor the moments together. As you and your family engage with the story of the first Thanksgiving or the nativity story, slow down and enjoy this time together with your children and in your home.
5. Use the curriculum as a menu. Give yourself the freedom to choose the parts of the study that speak most to the interests of your family. Whether you just spend a few moments together reading the story or you spend a couple of hours doing these activities, adapt the curriculum to be a fit for your and your family during the holidays.
6. Gather with friends for crafts and activities. Share in the learning with friends and gather together to recite poems, read living books together, or bake and craft together.

Favorite homeschool holiday activities

Over the years we have enjoyed the meaningful time of adding special holiday unit studies for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Here are some of my favorite activities over the years:

• Narration Notebooks: I love having Narration Notebooks as keepsakes for each of my children. My children have several Narration Notebooks from A Connected Christmas, which are like illustrated versions of the nativity story. I love seeing how their learning grows each year.
• Maps and timelines: I am excited for my children to use the maps and timelines in A Treasured Thanksgiving to learn about the Pilgrim’s journey across the Atlantic Ocean and more. We love using maps and timelines in our homeschool for in-depth historical studies.
• Traditional Thanksgiving Cookbook: I am also excited about the traditional cookbook in A Treasured Thanksgiving which celebrates the traditional Thanksgiving feast.
• Garland and ornaments: Each year we love making the dried orange garland and the birdseed ornament from A Connected Christmas. It is something we look forward to every year. I love making our home festive for the holidays!
• Recipes from across the globe: My children and I love baking together, and we especially love the variety of recipes included in A Connected Christmas: Around the World. What better way to celebrate other cultures than through trying unique and new recipes?
• Easter Egg Hunt: My children loved learning about the Resurrection story with the Easter Egg Story Hunt Activity.

Holiday unit studies from Treehouse Schoolhouse

Holiday unit studies are a special way to incorporate the meaning of Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Easter into your homeschool. Use these studies as a comprehensive curriculum or as a menu of ideas for connecting with your family during this special time of year. These studies include living book lists, passages of scripture, art study, poetry, hands-on activities, and more.

A Treasured Thanksgiving

A Treasured Thanksgiving is a Charlotte Mason-inspired curriculum designed with your whole family in mind. It’s an invitation to study the historical Thanksgiving story in a hands-on way. Spend two weeks diving into themes like the Pilgrim’s voyage to America, the Wampanoag people, the First Encounters, the First Thanksgiving, and the relationship between the Pilgrims and Native Americans in the first year. Featuring a robust book list of picture books and chapter books, this study will provide resources for the whole family.

Related: Introducing A Treasured Thanksgiving

A Connected Christmas

A Connected Christmas is a curriculum designed to connect hearts to the heart of Christmas – to the truth of Jesus coming to earth to seek and save the lost. Explore the nativity story through Scripture readings to delight in festive carols, stories, poetry, art, baking, and handcrafts.

Related: How to Use A Connected Christmas with All Ages

A Connected Christmas: Around the World 

Celebrate Christ’s birth and connect hearts to the truth of Jesus while experiencing how Christmas is celebrated across the globe with A Connected Christmas: Around the World. Give your children a way to travel the world as you explore the Christmas season in different languages, climates, and cultures. Experience the unique traditions of different countries through festive carols, stories, poetry, fine art, baking, and handcrafts.

Related: Introducing A Connected Christmas: Around the World

An Expectant Easter

Use An Expectant Easter to focus on what Easter is all about through Bible stories, hymns, poetry, art studies, picture books, projects, baking, and more. Connect and focus on the newness of Spring, the sacrifice Jesus made, and the power of His resurrection. 

Related: Curriculum Overview: An Expectant Easter

How do you do holidays in your homeschool? Share your experience in the comments below.