Holidays are exciting for kids, even the high schoolers. They make plans with friends, have special events in their extracurriculars, and there is always some expectation that school will also host fun holiday themed activities. This is the awesome thing about teaching during the holiday season: we do not have to do anything to build that excitement, it has already been done for us! Our job is simply to harness that holiday glee and hitch it to our current educational objectives.
I found this easiest to do in preschool and elementary school. Pinterest abounds with fun ideas for holiday snacks, crafts, lessons, book lists, and printable activities. I would build whole boards of ideas per holiday the month before, plan into Friday Funday centers, and then something special for the last day before or on the holiday itself. For example, for Halloween, we would borrow different fall and Halloween themed books and DVDs from the library. We planned trips with our homeschool groups to pumpkin patches and Halloween costume parties. A similar pattern emerged for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, etc.
As they grew older and I needed holiday themed lessons that were more specific to their grade level, I leaned into TeachersPayTeachers more and more, especially for math activities and our annual geography based “Christmas Around the World” unit. Advanced planning and resource gathering is important, and I usually completed these steps in November. No one likes to make a midweek run to multiple stores for specific craft supplies that they need for the next day’s craft! Libraries also save the day with the ability to reserve books ahead of time. The Christmas Around the World units would vary slightly from year to year, but we would study a country on each continent, read a story book related to their holiday tradition, and make a craft or recipe specific to that region. Ornament crafts were a favorite, and for a couple of years, I placed a small tree in our homeschool room to hang the ornaments on we worked our way around the world.
Now that my youngest is in high school, it has become a bit more challenging to get through the vast amounts of high school curriculum and still integrate holiday fun. I was fortunate to click on an email from TPT and find an escape room activity for “The Tell Tale Heart” by Poe, the poet she is studying in literature. It is on my list to find Christmas themed algebra 2 and US history activities for December as well. So far, I have one biology review activity, Snowman Synthesis, and am working on another to review the taxonomic domains & kingdoms. I believe Spanish 1 will be the easiest to plan activities for as I can pull favorite stories and activities from our prior Christmas Around the World stuff for the Latin American countries.
Your homework: Start NOW to find a few activities for your student’s grade level and subjects that are holiday themed and engaging. Believe me, the time flies from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, and you will be glad that you spent the first week or two of November getting things ready to “open & go” for the month of December.
North Star Homeschool Resources 