Our Homeschool Journal: Switching to Holiday Homeschooling

I am crazy about Christmas!  Yes, I’m one of those people who adores every part of the Christmas season, plays Christmas music as early as I can get away with it, and even wears Christmas earrings.  We celebrated Thanksgiving day with my husband at the fire station, then jumped happily into Christmas preparations.

In our homeschool the past two weeks…

In the past two weeks we finished my main goals for our nature study about trees, though like all nature study there was so much left to learn!  I won’t be focusing on a nature study topic with the kids during the holiday.  We’ll enjoy early winter (and hopefully some snow) and start a focus area on birds in January.

We still did core subjects (language arts, math) a couple days each week.  We spent a lot of time listening to audio books.  A nasty cold swept through the house and there is nothing better with sore throats and runny noses than cuddling next to the Christmas tree with hot cocoa listening to stories.

I learned a lot our first year homeschooling.  One of those things was how hard it was to do all the normal life jobs, prepare for Christmas, plus take advantage of all the wonderful events to attend and traditions to observe and things to make and do!  I’ve applied what I learned to our plans this year.

I shared this week how we count down the days until Christmas, and I’ll be posting in the next couple weeks about how we focus on the real reason for the season and how we keep on learning while enjoying all the wonderful things about Christmas time.

Places we went and people we saw…

My son’s Cub Scout troop toured the fire station (with Dad as a tour guide), my daughter had book club and piano lessons, we had our book club meeting on The Hobbit, we began practicing for our church Christmas Pageant, and we attended a play depicting a Christmas on the prairie (a perfect tie-in to our time of year and our history studies).

My favorite thing this week was…

Getting our Christmas tree at a tree farm we’ve been going to for years.  My parents go with us, there is a horse-drawn hay ride, warm cider and donuts, and a little shop in a big red barn where we buy everyone a new ornament each year…all in all a cherished tradition.

My favorite resource this week…

My daughter is taking an interest in cooking, and we are thrilled to help her expand her skills.  We used a great resource from Allrecipes.com called “Recipes in Motion.”  Each video (there are almost 700 right now!) walks you through the steps of making one of the recipes found on their site.  You can watch on their website, but we are watching on our television using the Allrecipes channel on Roku.  My daughter is ten and at the perfect age to follow along on the video with me in the background to oversee work with things that are hot or sharp.  For Thanksgiving at the fire station she made a pumpkin roll.  She learned a lot, it was delicious, and she was extremely proud.

Things I’m working on…

Everything Christmas!  I’m organizing our holiday/school plans, decorating, getting all my shopping done…

We’re reading…

We finished The Hobbit audio dramatization and it still just is not a story we enjoyed.  We had our book club meeting and had a lively discussion with us as the odd family out.  It’s always good to be comfortable being different!

On more enjoyable reading we finished On the Shores of Silver Lake and now move on to The Long Winter.  The kids and I laughed when I told them the title.  We said it doesn’t sound very appealing so we’re guessing some more unfortunate times lay ahead, but that the Ingalls family will be grateful through it all.  We are enjoying the Little House series so much.

While we were waiting for the audio version of The Long Winter through interlibrary loan, I grabbed one of our favorites to listen to when we’re in the car.  We’ve read or listened to the entire Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series several times and we never tire of them.  If you haven’t read the books with your kids you must!  They can be enjoyed heartily by all ages.  We were having such fun that we popped it in again when we returned home and my daughter and I took the opportunity to put another coat of paint on her dollhouse.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you’ll come back to see how we enjoy holiday homeschooling!

Thank you to the wonderful hostesses with fun link-ups on Fridays. Be sure to join the fun and see what other homeschoolers are up to!