Christmas Schooling 2024 | Weaving the Holidays Into Our Homeschool

today is our last day of school and I'm I'm kind of relieved it's going to be nice not to have that but our home school is so relaxed that it's really not all that big of a difference it'll be nice not to have to do a half an hour with William his Reading Writing and math it'll be nice not to have to stop and answer a couple math questions and check in with everybody check their work but we are so relaxed that it doesn't seem like it's going to be too big of a difference it'll be nice to be able to focus completely on our Christmas preparations um but this is our last day so one thing I'm really trying to keep up with is our housework because Christmas can be such a busy time with all these extra all these extra items and clutter that can fill up our homes with we have tons of Amazon boxes that are coming in keeping the house in order is just a really big deal at this time of year so just all of us starting the morning with our chores getting the house clean and put together before we start our day that's what we're working on now so we'll do a little bit of our schoolwork this morning in the afternoon I'll read to them we're in the middle of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever which my kids absolutely love even though this is probably the 10th time I'm reading it and then we'll just be doing some fun Christmas wrapping putting our Christmas cards together all those little things this afternoon maybe some baking so I'm going to put this away and we're going to get started and I want to invite you to join [Music] us oh want try not to mix the colors [Music] we are pretty much ready for Christmas I have a few more things on our list to finish up but with all the Amazon boxes all the extra gifts the extra craft projects the cooking all these things that we're doing that are out of the ordinary there is a lot of work to be done around the house and I find it so important to keep up with our house workor and so this is the part of the day nobody loves and it's hard to get everybody going but it is also the most important part to keeping everything together and to having a peaceful Christmas if you're new here my name is is Sherry I'm a Christian homeschooling mom to 10 kids I'm married to my high school sweetheart Nelson we met in geometry class so neither of us is very good at geometry and I love encouraging other moms in homeschooling here on my channel and over on the blog rlif homeschooling tocom during the last week before our break we pretty much do Reading Writing and math every day I do a shorter morning time and I do read aloud the kids we have some favorite books that we read aloud in the afternoon and then in the morning I have some fun picture books these are Nativity picture books specifically that I'm reading to my kids this week I recently wrote a post over on the blog sharing my favorite Advent books or the books that tell the Nativity Story we have a ton of fun picture books that we read around Christmas you can find those on the blog as well but I wanted to do a post showing specifically the books that tell about the birth of Christ because especially for our little ones they can hear a lot about Christmas they hear of course about Santa they hear about Frosty the Snowman they see all the presents they sing the songs and I want to make sure that they are also hearing the main story the story of Christ's birth and picture books are a great way to do this some of our other favorite Christmas picture books are Mr willoughby's Christmas the little fur tree I love TW the Night Before Christmas by Jan Brett her illustrations are just beautiful we love the Christmas miracle of Jonathan Tumi if You' have not read the story you absolutely should it's such a sweet story um we also love Christmas in the country and the legend of the candy cane these are just a few of our favorite picture books our older kids have also been busy this time of year our Co doesn't meet during December but we we have a lot of people in our Co-op that are just great at planning activities throughout the year whether their Christmas parties birthday parties just different G togethers so they've been busy doing those things and I've had some nice mornings with the younger kids at home today on our last day of school Brinley here is making a dessert for youth group and the rest of the kids are doing some of their independent work and they were really good this morning about just getting right to it and getting it done I didn't have to help too many kids on this morning which was kind of perfect because my younger kids were having a really hard time so I decided to just let everybody else work on their things in peace and I took these little guys out for a walk and I think that was exactly what they needed [Applause] I haven't been able to convince Ben to go in the stroller anymore so this wagon has been perfect and the cool thing about it is that all the kids want to pull it which makes it easy for me back at home in inside the kids had done a great job of doing their schoolwork Brinley was finishing up this little pastry and Julia and Ben were playing peekaboo at the window which was really cute oh he Tri on oh actually wait wait that's not go sh if you knew I what are you making wait just don't tell me putting in it on and we'll just show by oh that smells so good our girls love to bake and they upload some of their videos and the things they've made to a YouTube channel which has been a really fun project for them it's taught them a lot of course about baking but also a lot about just being consistent and learning technology skills and showing up every week to do something that you enjoy that too big one of the things we'll spend a lot of time doing on our break is playing games and this game is one of our favorites it's called Dutch Blitz I don't know if it's popular where we live where you live we live in Amish Country so that it's a very popular game around here the thing I love about it is that it's pretty fast-paced and sometimes it's hard for me as a mom if there's a car game that's really slow I get interrupted so many times that I feel like I can never finish but this one the rounds go pretty quickly and it's super competitive William is just in this stage where he loves Dutch Blitz and he asks me to play it with him all the time and it's a good skill buing um type of game for them they have to sort according to color and then also sorted according to number now when I have little kids especially like toddlers that want to play the game while we're playing I'll give them their own set of Dutch Blitz cards and I'll just turn over one of each color there's four colors blue green yellow and we say red some people say orange got four colors and then I just have them flip over one card at a time and try to put it in the right color pile so it's a fun game that the little toddler and preschool can play along with you now of course there's is always the baby and for us that's Ben and they're kind of a wild card he's a wild card we can't always keep them busy but he was watching the girls baking so that worked out just fine [Music] that a good angle [Music] you don't have to it's a centered okay [Music] I no it's snowflake oh yeah [Music] [Music] to call it yesterday I decided to make a salad for the kids for lunch I I think I made just salads for me and my two little ones and then I just had the rest cut up and let the older kids make their own salads uh I try to make these as interesting as possible um we just mix it up sometimes I have the usual just lettuce tomato cucumber Sometimes some broccoli but then the other things I try to change up sometimes I'll use raisins and apples or I'll do crains and nuts anything I can to make it interesting for my kids and to get them to hopefully eat more vegetables there you are I thought the girls pastry turned out just beautiful they did such a great job and I was really proud of them [Music] do that blz about to get [Music] Blitz I'm telling you those Dutch Blitz Games can get really intense one of the ways that we get a lot of the work done that I have at Christmas time is just to include the kids in it I talked about this a little bit in last week's video I'll link that for you if you want to watch uh here I'm reading again in the afternoon before I put Holland down for bedtime this book is room for a little one which is another adorable Nativity picture book if you get overwhelmed with all that's on your to-do list I would encourage you to just find ways to include your kids this isn't as easy when your kids are little but but even with middle-aged kids as soon as the young ones go down for nap time work on your projects together one of the big things that our kids do is to help us with the wrapping and they wrap most of our gifts and this is honestly because they all beg to do it and in fact sometimes they fight over who gets to wrap and so we have to try to space it out make it fair so that each person gets to wrap the same number of gifts or close to the same number the mountain and they fly down and they went and they I just love some of the illustrations in these picture books here you can put it on yeah whatever and then here just cut off another piece of the scissors I think if you adopt a whole family mentality towards Christmas or really towards anything it gives everyone unity and makes everyone feel aart and I think kids especially want to contribute they want to do big things they want to be a part of the work and they get so excited about Christmas when they've helped with baking the cookies or wrapping the presents or decorating bringing them along with you for every part of it they want to be a part of Christmas no all right this is also Julia and the Shepherds were having a sheep yeah and the white they have the white things do that well you might want to write down here so T another thing the kids helped with this year was making our Christmas cards this is a freebie you can find over on the blog if you're still looking for last minute ideas it's so simple the kids can color it we cut it up and put it on some red and green card stock put it in an envelope and we put our family picture in there it's something very simple on the back I had the kids write Handmade by and then put put their name and their age and um it's just a nice card to send out it's personal and the kids helped making them I want you to and then you need I'm going to get the crayons for you for color Okay father wanted to hear all about it well mother said just now the best part of our day is right here we finished up The Best Christmas Pageant Ever this is our favorite chapter book I read it every year my kids ask for it every year and we just love it now I've heard that the movie was redone recently and that it's really worth watching on Amazon although it is kind of expensive to stream right now because it's pretty new so that may be one that we're adding to our list this year speaking of movies that is something we're going to be spending a lot of time doing on our break when we have our Christmas break I take about 2 weeks and we just spend all of our time enjoying each other investing in relationships playing games together watching our favorite Christmas movies um the focus really is completely on family and of course remembering Christ's births will go to our church's Christmas Eve service which is always a really special time and then we'll have our Christmas with our kids we'll spend time with my parents and my family we'll spend time with my husband's family we have cousins that are coming in from out of state which is so exciting for all the kids and I like to use the time off to take a complete break I don't want to think about school at all I just want to enjoy being together [Music] oh where are he supposed to be right [Music] here wow let me see I got a lot I want to thank you for following along with us on our last last day of school before our winter break and if you like this content I hope you'll subscribe and take a look at the video I did last week on preparing for Christmas it shares a little bit more of our Traditions I'd like to leave you with a Bible verse that I read in my morning reading this comes from Romans 15 May the god of Hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may AB Bound in Hope friends if we have Christ we have everything he is the ultimate gift Merry Christmas [Music]