Sunday, November 26, 2017

December in Our Homeschool

For the last few years, each December we've had a special month in our homeschool. I let a few things drop off my homeschool mental to-do list (such as science and history exposure), and instead we shift our focus to holiday-related activities. This makes December a month to celebrate the flexibility of homeschooling while we dig into more artistic and musical pursuits.

December Curriculum Focus

Our curriculum focus for December includes the following. I don't require my children to participate in these activities, but nonetheless they generally both choose to participate in all of these to varying degrees.

  • Family music recital
  • Advent crafts
  • Homemade Christmas presents
  • Family reading of A Christmas Carol script
  • Winter and Christmas-themed read-alouds
  • Winter and Christmas movies


Family Music Recital

The children and I choose a few Christmas songs to play together. Throughout the month, we practice individually and together, as much as we each desire to. On Christmas Eve, we perform the songs together. The instruments we have on-hand for our Christmas songs are:
(If there is interest, I can post more details about how and what we do for our December music together.)

Advent Crafts

As a fun way to count down the days until Christmas, my children enjoy doing Advent crafts, which have one activity for each day from December 1st through 24th.  My kids have especially enjoyed doing the Advent Colouring Pages from Activity Village, such as the Christmas train and village, which can be cut out and made into a scene.

The Activity Village Advent resources used to be free, but are no longer.  Some other free options I have found include the following:
Commonly, my kids are really excited about Advent crafts for the first couple weeks of December, and then their interest fizzles out. This is totally okay, and I just let them participate as much (or as little) as they want to.


Homemade Christmas Presents

In the week leading up to Christmas, my children and I get to work on making homemade Christmas presents for family and friends.  The presents we've made have included Christmas tree ornaments, cardboard and/or popsicle stick toys, artwork, and food treats. This is an inexpensive and sweet way to shift the focus of Christmas away from ourselves and onto what we can make for others.


Family Reading of A Christmas Carol Script
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is a wonderful little story about the real meaning of Christmas. My family has enjoyed doing a reading of A Christmas Carol script for the last few years. Sometimes, this has been as simple as us all reading it together on Christmas Eve; other times, it has turned into more of a project for myself and the kids in putting on a little play with figurines, costumes, and sound effects. In the weeks before Christmas, the kids and I do a few practice read-throughs of our parts so that we are ready for the Christmas Eve reading. 

Winter and Christmas-Themed Read-Alouds

Throughout the month of December, I read-aloud books which have an emphasis on winter and Christmas. These include the following:

Christmas Movies for Family Movie Night

For our weekly Family Movie Nights in December, we watch winter and Christmas movies. Some of our favorites include the following:

A Great Way to End the Year

By shifting the focus in our homeschool for December, we are able to thoroughly enjoy the last month of the year together.  Instead of feeling like we are dragging our feet or going through the motions, December has become a cherished month of homeschooling for our family.  

Do you have any December homeschool traditions to share?


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3 comments:

serena said...

I love this idea! We're going to take the month of December off, too. I'd like to know where you get your music sheets for holiday music.

Sarah Smith said...

Hi Serena,
I don't get our sheet music from one specific site. Generally, once I know what instruments everyone wants to play for specific song, I will search around for an arrangement that includes what we need. (Our glockenspiel can work with flute music if it is in the right octave). Sometimes, I have needed to write out my own sheet music for one or two of the parts, and I have found MuseScore (free sheet music software) to work very well for that. That program is really neat because I can hear real-time what notes I am inputting to see if it sounds right.

Neither of my kids knows how to read music, so I will add in note names as necessary so they can easily find the notes they need to play (since the glockenspiel has note names on each key and I can tape note names to the piano keys).

I hope this helps!

Sarah Smith said...

A few websites I have used for sheet music include:
musescore.com
8notes.com
freechristmassongs.com