Thanksgiving is around the corner and that means it’s almost my favorite time of year.
Christmas school time!
Christmas is a time where we slow down with school and life. We do more crafts, we bake, we read, we enjoy slower days, and we soak up the season.
In the month of December, we push all of our loop and extracurricular activities aside and replace those with Christmas School activities. During this time, we still continue to do our core lessons (Language Arts and Math), but we plan to do only one lesson for each subject every other day.
This is our second year picking Christmas School choices and every year I’m excited find things that will excite my kids and bring us closer during the holiday season.
Last year, we followed Brighter Day Press Come to the Manger . We loved this guide and the activities that were suggested. I think this is the perfect guide for younger kids (Preschool-2nd grade)!
This year we’re excited to be trying out some new things for Christmas school and I can’t wait to share them with you.
Here’s what we’ll be using for 2024 Christmas School:
**Some links below may be affiliate links.
The Advent Story Book
To incorporate the true meaning of Christmas, we’ll be reading The Advent Story Book.
We’ll be reading this during breakfast time as a part of our morning basket. There’s a short passage to read every day along with a coloring book for the kids to do while we read. Each of the 25 Bible stories begins with a key verse and ends with a thoughtful question, helping us think and talk about the reason we celebrate Jesus’ birth.
I hope this is a new tradition that our family will cherish!
Read Aloud
Another thing we’ll be doing during breakfast/morning time is a fun daily read aloud!
This year we’ll be reading How Winston Delivered Christmas by Alex T. Smith. It’s about a mouse named Winston who finds a letter addressed to Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. He sets off on an adventure to deliver it to Santa.
This book is set up in an advent style format. There’s a chapter to read every day, along with craft suggestions at the end! While I don’t think we will be doing all the crafts this year, I’m excited for us to read this story together. I think my boys are going to love following Winston on his journey!
Slow Down Christmas (Daily Book Advent)
As a part of our daily advent, we’ll be reading one new book a day with Slow Down Christmas from A Year of Learning.
If you’ve been around for awhile, you’ll know that we love all things from A Year of Learning! We are on our third year of using Slow Down from A Year of Learning for our nature study. The collection is so delightful and we love all the resources that come with these guides.
I was drawn to Slow Down Christmas, because I loved the idea of doing a daily book advent and being able to dive deeper into topics in the books.
They recently released 15 new books for this study that we’ll be using this year. These books would be fun to wrap for a Christmas advent and have your child open each day. If accessing these books isn’t an option though, digital read alouds are included for each book!
Each day after we read a book, we’ll be doing fun crafts/coloring pages/activities to go with it. Similar to Slow Down nature study, this guide includes nature study posters, literature, STEM activities, and more. We can’t wait to get started!
Activities for the Littles
During read alouds, I like to have a basket with activities for my kids to do while I read. This year I filled their baskets with some things that I knew would keep them busy and engaged!
Some things I included in their basket:
That concludes our plans for 2024 Christmas School. As always, I hope this post is helpful and can provide some inspiration for your holiday school season!