Creating Holiday Traditions for Your Homeschool
Plus a fun Poetry and Recipe Printable
What do you think of when you smell cookies baking in the oven? Or walk through the doors of a building and the earthy vibrance of spruce-scented air fills the room?
Home. Grandma’s house. Christmas time with laughter and love abounding in the kitchen. A time of joy, simplicity, and a wistfulness to have it all back even if just for a moment.
At least that’s what happens to me.
You see, traditions are the foundation of memories. They are the cords that bind one generation to the next. The lifeline of heritage, history, and family are all bound together by the traditions that carry our memory back and promise us a future of being remembered.
Today I want to share with you ways to create holiday traditions in your homeschool.
Holidays have become a time of rushing, over-scheduling, and sometimes crankiness for us mamas due to the stress of Pinterest, parties, and the incessant pursuit of perfection instead of peace. (I may have a soapbox speech about that, but for another post)
I invite you to take a different approach. Let us make this a season of expectation. A month filled with delight. Dare I say it? Perhaps even a season we look forward to with joy!
Happiness is overrated. Because happiness is circumstantial. I might be happy for a few minutes when I get my morning coffee, but it doesn’t make me joyful, just a little more awake and human-like.
Joy, on the other hand, is relational. Knowing my children are walking in the Truth with our precious Savior brings me joy. Having a relationship with Messiah brings me unshakable joy. Having a good relationship with my children (not perfect, just grace-filled) brings me joy.
Joy is a state of the heart. Happiness is a state of the moment.
All that boils down to this – if you focus on your relationships by building traditions that pour into your family, you will have some amazing holiday memories. You will have traditions your children will share some day with your grandchildren.
If you focus on making your kids happy all the time, you’re going to have very difficult seasons ahead. And frankly, so will they.
Let’s help each other make wonderful holiday traditions the basis of our homeschools!
Some ideas to get you going on your own holiday homeschool traditions:
Keep your schooling light. We use A Gentle Advent studies as our homeschool curriculum every December. Turning back the dial to enjoy the season together has made a remarkable difference in our home.
Perhaps you have an Advent study or Christmas book/unit study that your family loves. Consider making that your “school” for the month and letting everything else go. My boys love it when we bring out our Advent wreath because that signals “winter break” for them.
Keep the read-aloud time going! There are so many glorious benefits to sharing good books with our kids. But there is something calming about gathering together to listen to a wonderful book. We have our 20 favorite Advent living books listed here if you need some ideas. You can also start on December 1st and read one chapter of Luke per day to go through an entire account of the life of Jesus Christ by Christmas!
And the kitchen traditions, of course! The holidays are a natural time to incorporate baking (hello, yummy math!), cooking (because you shouldn’t cook holiday meals alone), and the beloved tea times that make gathering with friends of your kids and mama friends of your own so wonderful and life-giving.
We’ve included a fun recipe and poetry printable below to help you get started. Some of our favorite tea times happen with spiced cider, hot cocoa, or even lemonade if it’s really warm in Georgia so be creative and add in these wonderful traditions for your family.
Download the printable cookie recipe and poetry here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JM2QIlTBnUBcLS-a7UEJato9Z4VVxP/view?usp=sharing