Homeschooling Christmas

Homeschool Question: "I've been toying with the idea of taking December 'off'. Does anyone else do this? I want to have FUN! I want to bake, sew, serve...do all the things we never seem to have time for. I'm scared to let go! Maybe we'll at least do math everyday. Anyone else here take December off?

Do The Children's Hour and since that is an hour, it is a thread that can run through the year as a spiritual- intellectual devotional! It is scripture, classic, and focused learning. This is just one hour!  Then you can do all you want to do, and it can be school too! 


In November and December, do Thanksgiving and Christmas as part of school, building homemaking skills, enjoying the cultural arts, and serving. The great thing about homeschool is we get to include anything we feel is worth while learning and experiencing. We are not limited by what schools do.

When I was a child in the early years of elementary, we did not do pre-school. Kindergarten was non- academic. Christmas programs were religious. I remember doing a nativity play about the Three Christmas Trees when I was in 3rd Grade. We sang Christmas carols, not just holiday songs in our school choir. It was all part of school. When we studied other countries we even made their food in our classrooms. It was all part of the academics!

When you boil down the 3 Rs whether you do: "Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic," "Reading, Reasoning, and Reciting," or "Research, Reason, Relate, and Record," approach to homeschool,  it is not difficult to substitute the Christmas theme and all of its cultural arts, along with reading Christmas stories, writing a Christmas Journal, and even doing Christmas math, in lieu of what you normally do. 

But "you had better watch out!" Wink  You might find yourself creating something thematic each month to take advantage of a New year, President's Day, Spring, Easter, and your children will end up getting a whole education!

There are many subjects to study in Christmas:
Scripture Study  Old Testament and Book of Mormon prophecy, New Testament and Book of Mormon passages about the nativity.

Art Appreciation  classic nativity paintings and Christmas themes.

Music Appreciation  classic Christmas carols, some are centuries old.

Literature classic Christmas stories and excerpted Christmas passages from classics.

Poetry Christmas Poetry.

Penmanship lists, Christmas tags, thank you notes, signing Christmas letters/cards, and even keeping their own special Christmas Journal.

Social Studies (Geography, Culture & History)- study Christmas traditions around the world.

Science study of snow, keeping a weather log, and winter nature walks and collecting (tree studies, winter birds, pine cones, and seed pods).

Math counting (links in a chain, counting cookies), fractions (measurements for cooking) , decimals (giving change), telling time (time management), mensuration (measuring fabric, weighing packages), creating a Christmas budget,  shopping for needed materials (handling money and giving change), and learning to read thermometers (candy thermometers, meat thermometers, and weather thermometers).

Home Economics and Shop holiday baking, crafting, sewing, making decorations and gifts.

Performing Arts  Caroling to shut-ins. Acting out the Nativity. Attend Christmas Concerts and Christmas productions.

All of this can be done very matter-of-fact, very playfully, having fun, and what is also important, they are learning, moving forward, and do not even realize it is school... All the while mom can keep Victory Journal of all the school she did with the children. And all the while they think they have a month off!  

Homeschooling Christmas

Homeschool Question: "I've been toying with the idea of taking December 'off'. Does anyone else do this? I want to have FUN! I want to bake, sew, serve...do all the things we never seem to have time for. I'm scared to let go! Maybe we'll at least do math everyday. Anyone else here take December off?

Moving Forward with the Bicycle Approach to Homeschooling

Are you struggling to train children to work, keep a home, teach several children of different stages of development, nurture younger children and keep your sanity?

Don't give up!  Keep pedaling and you will keep moving forward!

Many new to homeschool look for a curriculum as a vehicle to move their children towards being educated. Perhaps the vehicle they need is not just a curriculum, but taking other things into account that impact children's character, work ethic, brain development, core body balance, executive function, socialization and more.

Spiritual Gospel Centered Pre School Lessons Using Church Prepared Resources

Below is a question we received about spiritual lessons for preschool children.

“Hi Donna,

I am feeling the need to do something more for my 3 year old daughter. I am not very creative about hands on activities and I really want to teach a spiritual lesson every day because once a week in nursery is not enough. Do you recommend any preschool programs or should I just teach lessons from the nursery manual? Thanks!”

Becoming Goodly Parents

As Latter-day Saints we know it is vital we anchor our family's in the gospel of Jesus Christ. To help you to do this, I would like to spotlight a talk or article from one of our amazing General Authorities every Wednesday.

This weeks talk is: "Becoming Goodly Parents" by Elder L. Tom Perry
Given in the October 2012 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I love where Elder Perry tells us that,

"Parents must resolve that teaching in the home is a most sacred and important responsibility. While other institutions such as church and school can assist parents to “train up a child in the way he [or she] should go” (Proverbs 22:6), this responsibility ultimately rests on the parents. "

This is sooo true. We as parents bear a great responsibility to our children to make sure we do all in our power to raise them in righteousness. Thankfully The Lord offers many great resources to us to help us in our stewardship.

I honestly feel that what we offer at Moor House Academy is one of those God inspired resources. Mother and I have spent many hours prayerfully creating the resources we offer through our site.

If you haven't checked out our Children's Hour program (as well as the other educational materials we offer) I encourage you to do so. We offer free samples for most of our products so you can see if it is something that can benefit you and your family.

Using The Book of Centuries

I created and use a Book of Centuries in our home and my cottage school class "Leap into the Love of Learning." Today, we created our Book of Centuries for the school year. A Book of Centuries takes the study of history beyond the memorize and forget approach often seen in schools. This approach is hands on!  Children create a timeline of what they want to remember about each person and event studied.  A Book of Centuries helps organize history studied into an easy to use and understand format, and puts that information into an easy to retrieve format.

When we have larger groups we even add other steps:
"Stepping into Character." This is where the student comes as a character of history to teach others about them. "News Reporter."When the person being reported on is evil, the children can be a reporter, telling about the evil person. 

I recently changed the pages of the Book of Centuries to be a one page spread instead of a two page spread. I printed the Time/ Place grids on to card stock.  Each card stock page becomes an index page and content referenced on the index page is expanded and placed behind that page. 

We created our own tabs:
* Green for Creation– Ancient Times–1 AD
* Deep Burgundy Red for the Birth of Christianity, the Apostasy, and Medieval Times– 1 AD–1500 AD
* Blue for the Age of Discovery and Foundations of Liberty– 1500 AD– 1800 AD
* Yellow for the Fullness of Time–1800 into the future. 

When we begin the Book of Centuries, we have the children add their information, their parents' information, when their parents married, when their brothers and sisters were born. I want children to grasp what history is and they are part of history.

Once the children see themselves as part of history, we begin our study with a discussion of Pre-Mortal life which culminates in the Creation and the Fall. In addition to scripture we use the Apostle Bruce R. McConkie's book, "Doctrines of the Restoration: Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie," Chapter Ten: Christ and Creation. The children create a page for each day of the creation.  We use McConkie because it is a restored Gospel view. McConkie places the Creation and Fall scenario found in scripture and the temple, side by side. Then they can more clearly understand what the scriptures say and do not say about the creation. My students are then prepared to further research and learn more about the 36 Noble Men and Women from church history, nine artists; nine musicians; 36 mathematicians, explorers, inventors, scientists;  36 statesmen; and nine poets found in the Family Hour that we study each year, then add them to their Book of Centuries. Each child's Book of Centuries will be a treasure of their own making. 

Helpful Resources mentioned above:
Book of Centuries
The Family Hour
Leap Into the Love of Learning Class

How Do You Use The Children's Hour for Homeschooling?

The Children's Hour (CH) is great for home educators who want to boost their cultural literacy, expand their breadth and depth of learning, and those who need to show a portfolio of work at the end of the school year. This is a simple system, it all adds up! This also saves the parent hundreds of hours compiling lists of people, art works, music, other resources and links for further study. CH has a yearly theme based on a cycle or era of time: