December Homeschooling Help
December can be a rough month to remain on task for homeschooling children and their teacher. Twinkling outdoor lights, indoor decorations, Christmas music, baking smells, extra sweets, along with holiday events and a longer list of things to do, makes this a distracted time of year.
When January rolls around, sometimes it can feel like December raced by in a blink. Schoolwork was left undone or not absorbed by your students. Perhaps in other years, the work was completed, but everyone believed they missed out on the joys of the season. I’ve been in each situation. There are two things you could do to avoid either circumstance.
First, pick two or three subjects your child or children really need to continue to work on for the month of December. Focus their attention and yours on that limited scope. If you take the month off from school completely, it’s difficult to get back into the groove in the new year. Compromise. Cut out the other subjects and stick to math lessons, reading, and art. If writing is the focus for the school year, work diligently on that. If science and foreign language are your jam, go for it.
Let the other stuff go for just this month, without guilt. As parents, we can do a number on our psyche with all that we try to cram in. In December, many try to stuff so much more into an already full schedule. Cutting down on schoolwork (and assignments you need to correct) will make it easier to fit in family activity and traditions. The children will not be young and under your tutelage for long. Do the things, events, and traditions your family cherishes.
The second thing you to do to make this time of year different is to study how other countries celebrate Christmas. We have been doing this for the last twelve out of our eighteen homeschooling years.
Every year, we pick a country. It has been fascinating to discover what people around the globe do to make their Christmas special. We cover traditions, meals and food, clothing, geography, Christmas carols, and how the history or climate influenced the traditions. It’s a delightful way to expose your children to cultures and unique customs.
Most years on Christmas Eve, we have a dinner using the foods from our selected region. You could do the meal from the country on another night if that suits your schedule. Over the last dozen years, we have tried plum pudding (AKA Christmas Pudding), had “shrimp on the barbie,” panettone, various other fish dishes, and many new ways of making potatoes from so many places. On Christmas day, we sometimes add another dish or two from that country to our regular meal.
As for the traditions, we have had a recreated Las Posadas with a few of our kids in the house and had a Mexican piñata, sung Christmas carols while circling our tree as they do in Denmark. (My young son moved the tree to the middle of the living room during dinner that year. A fully decorated tree. Yikes. No ornaments broke in the Great Christmas Tree Move of 2018.) We have split open “Christmas Crackers” party favors and sat with tissue paper crowns on our head during our meal, tossed a shoe over our shoulder to “predict” the future, shared oplatek at the table while wishing each other good health and fortune for the new year, and listened to foreign Christmas carols while we made food for our feast.
What does this do? By limiting the “must do” subjects, it frees up some mental space for all. By studying other places around the world, we make memories experimenting with diverse foods and gain an understanding of unique observances. In some countries, people need to have a large, straw goat bound with red ribbon in the middle of their town and mini ones on their trees. In other places, fireworks are essential to celebrate midnight on the morning of December 25th. It isn’t Christmas in a certain region of Spain until they sing the “Caga Tió” song to a dressed-up log with a face, legs, and hat, whack it with a stick, and ask him to poop out turrón (a sweet nougat) and other treats!
Sometimes we can get caught up in trying to make a perfect holiday season. By studying how other places celebrate, we see that an “ideal” Christmas is vastly different around the globe.
I let you know in the next issue of my newsletter which country we picked for 2021.