Practical Tips For Using Homeschool Holiday Materials To Cover Content Areas

The time around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s can be an exciting and almost magical time of year. There are so many fun family activities, delicious foods, and fun traditions.

There are hundreds of fun and educational holiday ideas, freebies, unit studies, and more that are available from a variety of sources. These materials can make me feel like a kid in a candy store. I’ll take one of these, a few of those, and oh, look, I have to have some of that.

Before long, you have a to-do list filled with wonderful things that leads to overwhelm, especially when it still includes all your everyday tasks.

Often, when that happens, what should be a fun activity becomes a burden and a source of frustration.

Sometimes this makes us want to forget all the holiday stuff, but I think there is a better solution: use those homeschool holiday materials to cover your regular content areas.

Use those fun activities (not all of them, but the ones that work best for your family this year) to replace the items already on your to-do list.

How Do I Use Holiday Materials to Cover Content Areas

I will share some practical ideas for adding holiday fun in place of other things, but first, I want to clarify that you do not need to do ALL of these things.

Also, remember that just because you did not do it this year does not mean you cannot do it next year. The reverse is also true; just because you did it last year does not mean you have to do it this year.

Practical Examples of Using Holiday Materials to Cover Content Areas

Reading and Writing

Reading and writing are two areas that lend themselves to simple holiday swaps and even work well for family activities, which can further simplify the to-do list.

Reading

For reading, simply choose novels or picture books based on the holiday. You can do family read-alouds, independent reading and discussion, or enjoy a fun novel study complete with activities, all while taking a break from your normal studies.

We often do not use a complete reading curriculum and prefer to do independent novel studies. Still, if you are using a curriculum and are worried about finishing it, I would simply choose a chapter or section and trade it out for the Christmas materials so you are not adding in extra weeks of schooling.

A few of our favorite Thanksgiving and Christmas books

• Cranberry Christmas
• Cranberry Thanksgiving
• A Christmas Carol
• Letters From Father Christmas
• The Very First Christmas
• Pilgrim Boy

Writing

Depending on the age and development of your children, there are several easy ways to use holiday materials for your writing.

Copywork is an excellent tool for working on handwriting, grammar, and sentence structure. There are a wide variety of free and paid options for holiday copywork, or you could create your own using your favorite scripture verses, song lyrics, or quotes from the books you are reading.

A quick Google search will give you lots of ideas for holiday-themed writing prompts. You could have your children choose one a day to write a quick journal entry or select one to work on a longer, more polished essay. For some children, these holiday-themed prompts make writing feel more fun.

There are also a variety of materials available, including holiday-themed spelling practice, holiday-themed mad libs for grammar, and other worksheets to work on specific writing skills if you need a little more or something more specific.

Even something as simple as having a student write as many words as they can using the letters in words like turkey, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Ornament.

Art and Music

Art and music might be the most fun way to use holiday materials. We love holiday-themed art lessons, and my children often continue doing them even during our holiday break. There are many options for holiday-themed art and craft activities that can often double as cute gifts for grandparents or other family members.

One of our favorite resources is our You Are An Artist Clubhouse Membership, which gives us access to many holiday-themed art projects.

A hymn study can also be a great way to incorporate holiday-themed music. Christmas hymns are some of our family favorites, but we also really enjoy hymns of Thanksgiving in November. You can check out our free hymn studies to get you started.

We also use holiday-themed music and art during our fine arts morning time rotation, which works well for the whole family.

Holiday Themed Science

Science is another fun way to use holiday materials to cover your content areas. In our home, this is typically a subject we only switch up for our elementary- and middle-grade students, but depending on your high schooler, you could find options for them as well.

We can find science experiments related to the holidays. For example, you could do peppermint-themed activities near Christmas, cranberry- or turkey-themed activities at Thanksgiving, and more. Christmas baking also offers an excellent opportunity for science.

Personally, I put away our science books from Thanksgiving to Christmas to help make space for holiday materials.

Math

Full disclosure: for my older students (anyone in Algebra or above), we do not do holiday math; we keep going with their regular math and take a couple of weeks off at Christmas.

However, for younger students, there are so many great holiday math options. Depending on their age and grade level, it could be as simple as printing math fact sheets with the facts printed on holiday-themed shapes like ornaments or turkeys.

There are also great printables with holiday-themed word problems or color-by-number math facts that turn into a holiday-themed picture.

Another great option is to incorporate math into your holiday baking (learning about fractions, doubling recipes, measuring out ingredients). You could also have your child do the math to figure out how much of each item you will need based on how many people you have for a meal, and add up the cost from sales flyers or online grocery sites. This real-life math is a great way to introduce new skills or reinforce prior knowledge.

A Few Final Holiday Tips

• This list of ideas is not shared because you need to try to do everything; it is just a list of some potential options.
• Switch out one or two things and see how that works for your children.
• Traditions can be lots of fun, but you do not have to do everything every year.

Happy holiday homeschooling, friend! 🎄

Want More Holiday Homeschool Tips?

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