14 hours ago
Every December I find myself wanting to set aside a weekend for in-depth Advent and Christmas school planning. Unfortunately, since it is December, I almost never have a weekend for such pursuits.
It occurred to me that alot of other homeschool moms might be in a similar place. You want to have a beautiful plan for a meaningful Advent, or Christmas School, but you have very little time to put one together. Maybe you end up purchasing a pre-made plan, only to realize it will take time (and more money) to gather all the required books and craft supplies.
I am going to share what we fall back on for homeschooling during the Christmas season. This non-plan requires no purchases (except the ones you want to buy), no required resources, and it’s open-and-go in the sense that you can do it mostly on the fly if necessary.
This is my very simple plan for adding some Christmas flair to those homeschool days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We keep up with some of our regular subjects, but the “Christmas school” activities are a priority.
Step One: Pick a book of the Bible to read through.
Since Advent is about waiting for the coming of Jesus, and the whole Bible is His word, literally any book will do! But we want to make sure we are not neglecting spending time with Jesus by reading scripture together. Some great choices would be:
Any of the Gospels - Start at Jesus’s birth and end with His resurrection!
Psalms - Especially 100-150, which are songs of praise.
Genesis - The number of times Genesis points ahead to Jesus is astounding!
Revelation - Not for the faint of heart, but points to what we believers are waiting for now - Jesus’s return.
Step Two: Choose some Christmas carols to sing (and learn).
There are so many places you can print music for some of the good old Christmas hymns. I appreciate this free hymnal, which has a good selection. I printed up seven copies the “Incarnation” section of the hymnal, and that’s what we use for singing, but you can also just look up the lyrics for songs you want to sing as you go through the month. Sing one well-known carol each day, and choose one that’s new to you to learn each year. We have found some new favorites this way!
Songs In Our Bundle Of Papers:
Joy To The World
Hark The Herald Angels Sing
Angels We Have Heard On High
Silent Night
Away In A Manger
O Little Town Of Bethlehem
We Three Kings
Once In Royal David’s City
The First Noel
In The Bleak Midwinter
O Come All Ye Faithful
See Amid The Winter Snow
God Rest You Merry Gentlemen
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
Good Christian Men, Rejoice (highly underrated)
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
Gentle Mary Laid Her Child
Step Three: Gather Christmas books.
This is my favorite part…if you are a homeschool mom, I know you probably have some Christmas books already in your house. Round them all up into one big stack, and grab a couple to read each day! If you really don’t have that many Christmas books to choose from, hop on your libraries website and place a few holds. Read them as they come in. I have a list of our family’s favorite Christmas books here, but the best ones are the books your library actually has, so work with what you have. If all else fails, try searching for a few titles on Youtube - there are many videos of popular picture books being read aloud.
Step Four: Make a list of Christmas crafts and goodies.
Think of goodies you were planning to make anyway, or crafts you remember from your childhood. Think of items you already have around your house you could use for crafts - construction paper for chains, oranges you could slice and dry, extra yarn you could knit into garland, flour you could make into Christmas playdough… be creative, but don’t overthink it! It doesn’t have to be complicated to be a wonderful memory. The humble paper chain is greatly underrated.
Some Christmas Craft Ideas:
paper chains
aper snowflakes
dried orange ornaments
cranberry and popcorn garland
any Christmas art tutorial on Youtube (just do a search)
handmade gift tags
Our Favorite Christmas Goodies To Make Together:
Sugar cookies
Ginger cookies
Chocolate covered pretzels
Salted caramel cookie sandwiches (using this filling recipe)
Christmas fudge
Wassail
Step Five: Make a list of activities you want to do.
You do not have to do all the activities that are listed in a perfect Advent guide - in fact, I think you shouldn’t try! Choose some things that are fun and meaningful (or even just practical) to you and your own kids, and put them on the calendar. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Christmas Activity Ideas:
Make a day of taking the kids shopping for each other’s presents
Bake, of course (see Step Four)
Write Christmas cards (recruit everyone to help - why not?)
Listen to music from the Nutcracker (or watch the ballet on Youtube)
Listen to Handel’s Messiah
Watch an old Christmas musical
Play a game together (we like this game for a Christmas theme)
Do a Christmas scavenger hunt at the mall (search for ideas, or get these handy cards)
Read A Christmas Carol together and then watch the movie
Assign secret pals, like a secret Santa only you do nice things for each other
Plan a poetry teatime with Christmas poems, tea, and cinnamon toast (or another easy snack)
Those five steps are really all you need to do “Christmas School”! I know because this is how we have made December homeschooling special for the last five years or so.
You will notice that not all of these ideas are very school-ish or perfectly coordinated, but that’s not the point of adding Christmas activities to your homeschool day. The point is to slow down, enjoy each other’s company, make memories together, and make the excitement and wonder of Jesus birthday tangible for your kids…yes, through cookies, and playdough, and Christmas lights, and as much beauty as you can cram into the season. Point them to the reason we do all these joyful activities: because of joy for the gift of Christ Himself.
I love this quote:
“At Bethlehem, God’s Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the Consolation of Israel was born of a woman-and that moment was so staggering that even the stars had to come down and see it. And then, every year, we celebrate that moment. We take one of the most difficult theological truths— the Incarnation—and attempt to show that truth through our celebrations. The men can talk about the Incarnation, church fathers can write important treatises about it, pastors can preach about it, theologians can parse and define it ... but we women are the ones who make it taste like something. We make it smell good: How crazy is that? ‘And for my next trick, I will take Athanasius’ De Incarnatione and I will say it with cookies and wrapping paper and cinnamon and marshmallows and colored lights and tablecloths and shopping trips and frantically-last-minute-late-night-Amazon-orders and ham—and I will do it in such a way that my four-year-old will really GET it, and it will send roots deep down into his soul where it will anchor his loves and his loyalties and shape his allegiances well into his nineties.’”
-Rebekah Merle, ‘Eve In Exile’
This is what we are doing amidst all the flurry of Christmas preparations and activities. Creating the wonder of Christmas in little hearts doesn’t have to be complicated, but I hope you’ll remember that all these little special touches do matter. They make the birth of Jesus and the Gospel that much more impactful, special, and tangible to our children and families as we celebrate God’s greatest gift to mankind - our Savior.
As Charles Spurgeon says in another favorite quote:
“Feast, Christian, feast! You have a right to feast. Go to the house of feasting tomorrow! Celebrate your Savior’s birth. Do not be ashamed to be glad - you have a right to be happy.”
Let’s make this Christmas season as joy-packed as possible, even on homeschool days. Not aesthetically perfect, or impeccably organized, or flawlessly executed - just hectic, happy, warm, sparkling, messy, calm, cozy, exciting…and joyful most of all.
I realized the other day that it’s been months since I did a reading update. Since I have fifteen books I haven’t shared, my goal is to write reviews for four books a week until Christmas. If you are building a reading list for 2026, here is your chance to get some ideas!
I’m titling this one “Light Books With Deeper Themes” because if you read the first three, which are all light in tone, you will find themes of loneliness, friendship, anxiety, and hope.
The last one is not a light book, but each of these book posts will have a wrench thrown in. Just go with it.
Valencia and Valentine by Suzy Krause
I read a different book of Krause a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. This book has been waiting in my Kindle for quite a while now.
In Valencia and Valentine, we are introduced to two characters. One is a young woman, Valencia, who works in a call center, is very socially awkward, and is afraid of everything - basically a young woman who is afraid to live. The other is an old woman, Mrs. Valentine, who lives alone, but loves being around people and finds excuses to talk to others and ways to fill her days with small, meaningful things - an old woman who has learned how to live well.
I thought I knew where this story was going, but about a quarter of the way through I realized I had no idea. As we get further looks at Valencia’s existence we realize how dark and empty it truly is, and for most of the book she stays right there in that darkness. We also start to realize that all is not quite well with Mrs. Valentine.
Just as I started to feel rather uneasy about what was actually going to happen to these two characters, I glimpsed the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. The ending was completely unexpected, slightly tragic, but also happy and sweet. I don’t want to spoil it, so that’s all I’ll say. If you pick this one up, be prepared for the unexpected.
Content Notes: Some discussion of mental health disorders, some disturbing dreams/hallucinations.
Bottom Line: Sweet and sad and a little weird. Pick it up if you don’t mind a little tragedy with your uplifting fiction.
The Happy Life Of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh
I read a Christmas book I did not enjoy by Walsh last year, but I decided to give her another chance and I’m so glad I did. Isadora Bentley reads an article she considers to be ridiculously with 31 ways to be happy. She decides to turn the article into a science experiment in order to debunk the article. Along the way she ends up finding new friends, connecting with a certain professor, and learning how to enjoy life. I thought this was a sweet, uplifting read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Content Notes: One of the things she tries is yoga, and as someone who has convictions against yoga I wasn’t a fan of that. No other notes that I can recall,
Bottom Line: Pick it up if you are in the need of something quirky and light.
The English Masterpiece by Katherine Reay
In the 1970s, Lily helps her boss, Diana, plan a new Picasso exhibit at an art museum, but she ruins the opening event by impulsively declaring one of the Picassos a fake. She is immediately put on leave, and is devastated. Not only has she potentially lost her dream job, but her family will suffer from the lost income. She has to find a way to find out what is really going on with that painting, and hopefully save her job and her boss’s reputation, and stay out of jail. But is everything as it seems with her boss? Where did that painting actually come from?
As someone who doesn’t know much about the art world, and also doesn’t like modern art at all, I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book. Reay did a great job explaining the basics of how museums acquire paintings, and there were interesting explanations about what makes art special as well. The underlying themes of this book are more about friendship, sisterhood, and the value of meaningful relationships. I also really enjoyed the 1970s setting, which I thought was painted well.
Content Notes: Vague references to sexual relationships, but I would consider this a clean book.
Bottom Line: Pick this one up if you like mysteries, museums, and are a tiny bit interested in art.
Midnight In Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
I mentioned in the spring how I had become interested in the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, and this book is a very thorough history of it.
Higginbotham tells the story of what caused the disaster, the initial reaction to it, the efforts to contain the reactor, the effects on the surrounding countryside, and the devastating effects on the men who were sent to work in the danger zone. He also tells how it was finally contained, and some of the research that has been done in the Chernobyl area since the disaster. Despite writing about such a devastating event, I thought the author offered a balanced view of nuclear energy, including the concerns and the benefits.
I learned so much from this book - including that the scientists were initially worried that the reactor, if not contained, would burn down through the earth, perhaps never stopping until it reached the core. Can you imagine? I listened to this book on audio, which I think was the right way for me to read it, because it let me get the information I was interested in without getting too bogged down in the names and details.
Content Notes: Some cursing in various quotes, people die from cancer and related illnesses because of the radiation.
Bottom Line: If you don’t know much about Chernobyl, this is the book to learn about it.
These are books I finished in the early fall, but as I revisit them in writing this review post, I am remembering how much I enjoyed them all. The first three each struck a nice balance between being meaningful and easily readable. And the last one was just fascinating without having to try.
Have you read anything similar this year, with a light tone but deeper underlying themes?
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