Homeschooling and Holidays: Staying on Target

As we approach the holiday season, you may be wondering how you can stay on schedule with homeschooling.  My family decided several years ago that we would take off the entire month of December from our schooling endeavors.  We usually have a lot of things going on with church programs, visits from out-of-town relatives, and special events with our supplemental school, so taking some time off from regular book work helps us to accomplish our other tasks during the holidays.  

There are many ways we stay on schedule with some of our schooling during the holidays, though. This is a great opportunity to allow your students to research Christmas in other countries.  Perhaps they could find recipes of traditional Christmas dishes and then make some of them.  This allows students to work on history, language arts, and math.  You can also plan community service projects during the month.  It might include providing homemade laundry soap to a local laundromat, writing encouraging notes and leaving them on the vehicles of customers at the local grocery store or Wal-Mart or Target, or adopting an underprivileged family by providing a Christmas meal. 

Take this time to work on teaching life skills, character traits, and morals and values to your children.  Learning goes far beyond academics, and this is a wonderful time to invest in these areas of our children’s lives and education.