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Holiday Break & Homeschooling

How do you stay on track during a long break?
How to incorporate the holidays into you school?
How to motivate your child after a long break?

Tune in this week while we discuss these topics and more!

Episode 008:

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Advent Calendar Cards (pdf)
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Show Notes

The holidays are here! Hot cocoa, warm fires, time with family and making memories. It can also be stressful thinking of all the things you have going on this time of year. We want to tell you that the holidays are a great time to relax and take a break from structured homeschooling.

A lot of homeschooling parents take off most or all of December! You can, too. Kids can still learn during this time and formal schooling will be waiting for you in January.

We are coming up on what Juliana and Lydia from Rants to Mommyland used to refer to as the “Halloween to Holidays Death Spiral”.

Rants to Mommyland Blog:

http://www.rantsfrommommyland.com/p/our-favorite-rants.html

Nicole’s Christmas Movie Bingo Cards: https://myfreebingocards.com/bingo-card-generator/preview/pkbr9cb

How do you stay on track in homeschool during a long break? (4:32)

Some kids do just fine taking a break from homeschooling and can just pick up where they left off. In fact, some kids really benefit from that. Other kids can get undone when taking a break which can force you into doing a ton of review before you can get back into your groove. Some ways to avoid this are:

Schooling year round
Dropping all subjects but 1 or 2
Encouraging other activities that still build skills
Changing existing lessons to incorporate holiday themes

How do you incorporate the holidays into your homeschool? (5:59)

Homeschooling during the holidays is an excellent example of how homeschooling can be adapted to your lifestyle. It’s okay to slow down, relax, and take a break from the regular book learning.

From Julie Bogart’s “The Brave Learner,” “ Kids who bake, woodwork, and quilt have a better grasp of what fractions are about then a child who encounters them on worksheets.”

Embrace it! For years my family struggled with getting off track at this time of year and I would joke that we were bagging everything for a Home Ec semester.

Some great organizational pages that I used as a base for my Home Ec semester. We will be including a downloadable version soon!

Household Management 101

Here’s some ideas of things to do instead of formal schoolwork:

Make festive memories instead.

Add in craft days

Holiday cooking and baking

Cooking/Baking Book Recommendations:

Alton Brown, “Good Eats” series:

Good Eats: The Early Years:

Good Eats 2: The Middle Years:

Good Eats 3: The Later Years:

Good Eats: The Final Years (Good Eats, 4)

The Pioneer Woman Cooks―A Year of Holidays: 140 Step-by-Step Recipes for Simple, Scrumptious Celebrations:

Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook for Young Readers and Eaters:

These are excellent cookbooks with picture step by step instructions for littles:

Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes: A Cookbook for Preschoolers and Up

Salad People and More Real Recipes: A New Cookbook for Preschoolers and Up

Honest Pretzels: And 64 Other Amazing Recipes for Cooks Ages 8 & Up

Create a holiday writing assignment

Holiday Writing Recommendations:

Story Starters: Helping Children Write Like They’ve Never Written Before

Jewish Creative Writing, Yom Tov and Holidays!: 77 Jewish Story Starters, Journal Prompts, Comic Creations, and Haiku

Make a budget

Money Ninja: A Children’s Book About Saving, Investing, and Donating (Ninja Life Hacks)

Do a holiday inspired science projects

Gumdrop Engineering — Gumdrop engineering

Holiday STEM Recommendations:

Star Wars snowflakes

Snow Slime:

Directions: https://www.instructables.com/Snow-Slime/?amp_page=true

Ingredients Super Snow Powder

Christmas Slime Advent Kit:

Solder kit- Ornament (beginner):

Solder kit- Blinking Snowflake:

Solder kit – Musical Christmas Tree:

Holiday STEM Activity Book: “How to Build an Elf Trap The Ultimate Holiday STEM Activity Book for Kids with 12 Traps and 12 Bonus Activities”:

There are 14 different religious holidays in the month of December

Holiday Celebration Recommendations:

What Do You Celebrate?: Holidays and Festivals Around the World:

Winter Holidays Around the World

This unit study workbook great for 6-12 and is packed with activities and challenges, with map work, atlas work, reading and response passages, exploring cultures and languages, crafts, coloring, recipes, and more: