Just saw this blog about homeschooling in December and I thought it had a lot of good tips. I also wrote an article recently about fun extras we have done over the years.

Here is a small excerpt:

Over the year, the girls and I have often done a Christmas Around the World Unit Study in December. I had bought a book years ago that we have used for a base for that, but there is so much more available online.

There is a free unit study at www.homeschoolshare.com that includes Argentina, Ethiopia, England, Australia, France, Mexico, Philippines and more.

*Christmas Around the World

Each country has pages on customs, traditions, books to read and recipes to make. They also have printables, ornament ideas, map extras and more. It is very good. (You can do a Country in depth each week, or if your children are younger, do 3 or 4 countries one year, and other countries next year.) *This is a great website, by the way. Tons of free unit studies (for all ages) submitted by home educators.

One easy extra our girls enjoyed (when they were younger) was a Christmas Worksheet / Activity Binder. I took a few hours one afternoon or evening in late November, searched online for fun worksheets or easy activity ideas and printed them off. *Decide which children would like to do what and print off multiples of some worksheets.

I also looked through Usborne Activity Books (and others) that I already had in our home – using sticky flags to mark the activities I thought the girls would enjoy. Then I took a binder and plastic insert pages (which I had already marked 1 through 20 - IF we home schooled 20 days in December!), and started filling those inserts with the printables (and sticky notes with the activity name and page number from the books) I had already gathered.

The first year I did this, it was so successful – I put all our Christmas activity books and that binder into a basket and used the idea again the next year. Often we didn’t get all the worksheets / activities done that year, and some could be used the following year. I looked for worksheets and extras that went along with what they had already done (review) or were doing. There were word searches, cryptograms, easy ornament ideas, How to Draw pages, card making ideas, math worksheets, dot to dot, origami and more – all with a Christmas theme. They usually did 2 – 4 worksheets or activities a day in December, along with our regular home schooling. It really surprised me how much the girls liked this. We named it Christmas Home School and they actually requested that I do it again the following year. It became a tradition.

Some of the websites I used were:

All Kids Network

DLTKids

DLTKids Bible

Kidzone

Kidzone Math

Print Activities

Enchanted Learning Christmas (Enchanted Learning is excellent and well worth the subscription fee. All the other sites are free.)

*Please note you need to do what is right for your family. My children don’t mind worksheets (one daughter really enjoyed them), so we did some worksheets. Other families might be more into activities or reading. The most important thing is to remember to include some fun each week or month in your home schooling – whatever that looks like in your home