I love Christmas school so much! In a few days I’ll be sharing our plans for this year, but, meanwhile, if you’re new to Christmas school or need some ideas…you’re in the right place! Christmas school is a time where many homeschoolers set aside or lighten their core load of work to focus more on learning about Christ and/or doing some fun Christmas themed learning. And, some still keep a full work load, but just add in a little extra Christmas magic. You really can do whatever is best for you and your season of homeschool. Over the last seven years we’ve done everything from going all out to keeping it super simple and both have been perfect in their own way. Wherever you’re at this year, I think you’ll find all sorts of ideas here.
Advent
Advent is a time to prepare spiritually for both the celebration of Christ’s birth and the promise of His second coming. Here are a few highlights of things we’ve used in past years:
Jotham’s Journey with the Christmas Advent Wreath & Advent Candles: We used this advent last year every night before bed and it was magical. We’ll be continuing on with the other books in the series this year. It’s been a really good fit as our kids are getting older. If you’re new to the stories, you start with the book Jotham’s Journey. It is a great historical fiction family read-aloud and there is just a short part of the story to read and discuss each day. It follows a young shepherd boy in Israel and his adventures lead him through the Christmas story, and the events that surround the birth of Jesus Christ.
To learn more about the symbolism of the advent wreath and candles you can visit: Christmas School 2025.
The 25 Days of Christ: When my kids were younger we used this as our main retelling of the Christmas story and it was perfect! This set comes with 25 days of ornaments (you can get a finished ornament kit or an unfinished kit that your kids can decorate). There is also a reference card that includes each day’s scripture to read and usually a short clip on Christ’s life to watch. The kit also comes with The Good Shepherd Book which is an illustrated children’s version of the Christmas story paraphrasing the scriptures. I love to read this first so after when we do read the scripture passage - my little kids have a visual of what is going on in the scriptures. We store the ornaments in these advent bags which I think are super cute and the kids absolutely love opening a new one each day.
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2025: History of Christmas
Last year was unexpectedly one of our very favorite Christmas schools. We studied the history of Christmas and we all learned so much! I’d highly recommend the Christmas Through the Ages curriculum guide. The book recommendations, art studies, and music playlist that comes with the guide are all phenomenal.
Last Christmas season we read a lot! In addition to Jotham’s Journey & the books we were reading in the history guide, we also read The Ickabog & The Christmas Pig. We really love JK Rowling and it was fun to read them back-to-back so we could compare her style and writing. I had a bunch of Christmas themed quiet hands-on activities for the kids to do while we read and you can see more of them on my post: Christmas School 2025.
2024: Handel’s Messiah & Symbols of the Season
Inspired by President Russel M. Nelson’s nod to Handel’s Messiah in October of 2024 General Conference, we decided to center our Christmas school around this oratorio - a sacred story told in music. In short, the oratorio of Handel’s Messiah tells of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection. For this study we used Handel: Who Knew What He Liked & Music & The Spoken Word: The Messiah Story with Martin Jarvis & the Metropolitan Opera and then we added lots of Christmas hymns and song study by watching Christmas performances and reading An Advent Carols Countdown.
We used Symbols of the Season for a fun twist on studying Christmas symbols and crafting. And, I have a discount code for the book that goes along with the study, See Christ in Christmas.
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For our family read aloud and book club we read The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street and we also listened to A Christmas Carol Advent. During our read-alouds I like to have a fun hands-on activity for my kids to work on and this year we used a Winter Wonderland coloring bookwith these fun alcohol-based markers. We also used this air dry clay snowman kit and it was a huge hit! And the kids also really enjoyed using this Christmas themed drawing book as well.
To see everything we did, including all the Christmas performances we watched and what our rhythm looked like you can check our Christmas School 2024.
2023: Nutcracker & Evergreen Study
In 2023 we were using the Season’s Afield Curriculum (which we LOVED and you can see my full review here) and there is an Evergreen unit which fell right at Christmas time so it was perfect to make apart of our Christmas school. If you’re looking for a fun science curriculum you could totally start it now and jump into their winter units with Brambly Hedge.
We also did a study of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker which came out this volume 4 2023 Winter Bundle. If you go with a Nutcracker study this is our favorite version of the book and we absolutely loved doing some cute Diamond Painting Nutcrackers. I also grabbed the cutest mini nutcrackers at Hobby Lobby for the kids to paint.
I also didn’t plan this, but the kid’s decided they wanted to make Christmas cards for their church leaders and some of our extended family. We just folded some card stock and used tutorials from Art Kids Hub to make the cards and I think they turned out so cute and it ended up being a great writing activity.
2022: Traditions, Art, & Picture Books
In 2022 I remember feeling super burnt out so I just kept it really simple (which I am totally giving you permission to do if you’re feeling the same way right now). But, we just did our favorite family traditions like decorating gingerbread houses and reading lots of Christmas books. If you want to browse our Christmas book collection I have a whole list here on my Amazon Storefront: Our Favorite Christmas Books.
Our family also has deep Scandinavian roots so our traditions and projects always seem to come back to Saint Lucia even though we’ve never done a formal study of her. This year we also did some fun holiday painting tutorials which all came from The Watercolor School. (I have more details on the art school program we use which you can read here: Lily & Thistle Art School.)
2021: American Girl Christmas
This was such a fun Christmas season. We took a break from our main curriculum and I went all out on our Christmas learning shelf and the kids LOVED unwrapping new Christmas activities each day. I have all the details on what I had on my shelves linked on this old blog post: Christmas School 2021.
This year we were studying early American history so we also really enjoyed using An American Girl Christmas
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2020: Narnia
This year we put all our other curriculum on hold and I read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to my older girls. We did this Narnia unit study and to date, this is still my very favorite Christmas study we’ve ever done. It was magical. If you do this unit, I’d highly recommend Finding Narnia and A Family Guide to Narnia: Biblical Truths in CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia.
A few years ago I also read Once Upon A Wardrobe which is also a great book to go along with the study especially if you have older kids that are already familiar with CS Lewis.
2019: Our First Homeschool Christmas
During our first year homeschooling, we pulled our girls out of public school in mid-November. Of course I felt overwhelmed, but I remember this Christmas season being one of our best Christmases. My heart was SO full to just have extra time with my kids. Since I was just learning what I was doing, we mainly focused on was math and language arts and, honestly, the simplicity of that was absolutely wonderful.
During this Christmas season we read lots of picture books and did some Christmas themed science experiments I think I must’ve found off Pinterest. All I remember is we made some borax ornaments and it was one of my first go at some fun hands on Christmas activities with my kids and I loved it! It was a really special time in our home because, in hindsight, I can see now that I was just re-learning to love learning. Either way, just remember, since the holidays tend to be very busy (and often a lot of the work falls on mothers) don’t ever hesitate to take a light load and just focus on the basics -whether that’s core work…or Christmas! Here is a snapshot of one of our previous year’s Christmas Rhythm.
That wraps up! I hope you found this post helpful and it might spark some fun Christmas-themed ideas for you. Have a happy holiday homeschool season!
Looking for gift ideas? Be sure to check out my Homeschool Family Gift Guide!
