Christmas School 2024
Happy holidays! If you’re new to Christmas school it is a time where many homeschoolers set aside or lighten their regular school work to focus more on learning about Christ and/or do some fun Christmas-themed learning units. Be sure to check out my post from last week that shares what we’ve done Our Past 5 Years of Christmas School. This year we have some fun things lined up and overall I tried to keep things pretty simple. So, today I am sharing a little more about what our Christmas season rhythm will look like this year, what we’ll be doing for advent, and our full Christmas school line up (including two read-alouds I am really looking forward to).
Rhythm
Our Christmas rhythm is a little different each year. Some years we’ve taken the whole season off from our school work and others we’ve done a mix of core and extras. This year since all of my kids are a little ahead in their math course books we’re going to take a break from math right after Thanksgiving and pick it back up after our Christmas break in January. We’re also going to take a break from our regular history, science, art, and other literature studies and basically just do language arts, reading, and piano practice. This will give us a little more time in our day to do our Christmas school/activities/traditions and also lighten up my homeschool load during the busy holiday season.
Morning Advent
As many of you know, we absolutely love our 25 Days of Christmas advent and we’ll definitely be using it again this year. This is so perfect to teach the Christmas story and it’s really something all my kids look forward to every morning in December. Code: HCL20 will get you 20% off The 25 Days of Christ
Since my girls are getting older though I wanted something a little more specific for them. Since we just finished studying 'light’ when I saw this Light of the World: 25 Days of Advent Inspiration I knew this would be the perfect fit for us. I am just going to combine this with our 25 Days of Christ and read the scripture and do the discussion prompts for “older youth” with my girls.
Handel’s Messiah
This year one of the main things I wanted to focus on for our Christmas study was Handel’s Messiah. I really don’t know much about it so I am excited to learn right along with my kids. I’m so grateful for a few really good musically gifted friends who gave me some great direction for this. One thing I learned in preparing for this study is that an oratorio is a sacred story told in music. So, in short, the oratorio of Handel’s Messiah tells of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection.
The concert is over two hours long. I’ve found there are so many good advents to help break it down (and I was SO close to buying this one since I know it’s popular in the homeschool world). But, one thing homeschooling has taught me is that sometimes we need to gain a love and appreciation for something before we dive too deep. So this year my main goal is to just introduce my kid’s to Handel’s life story and start listening to the music. Since, traditionally, The Messiah was written for Easter I am planning to just play it more between Christmas and Easter so we can all become more familiar with it.
To do this, I am sure there are some fabulous performances of The Messiah, but we’re partial to The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square so here are the resources I’ve compiled to pull from over the next few months.
Handel: Who Knew What He Liked: This book is what I am using to introduce Handel and his life story. It’s a short chapter book that we’ll probably spend a few days reading during our morning time.
Music & The Spoken Word: The Messiah Story with Martin Jarvis & the Metropolitan Opera: Next, we’ll watch this and it is a fantastic 30 minute broadcast telling the story behind writing The Messiah.
Handel’s Messiah: Debtor’s Prison: This is just a short 3 minute short clip I’ll probably show one of the mornings for our devotional.
Handel’s Messiah (Full Easter Concert): We’re not going to listen to this whole thing in one setting, but I am planning to break it down in chunks using the following two guides:
Messiah in 52 Movements: Video and Commentary: This is a compilation of each movement in the concert and commentary that explains what is going on in the story told in music. And, the nice thing is these movements link directly to the piece in the full concert so I am just going to touch on these. I am not worried if we don’t get through all of them - like I said - I want to spread this out over a few months so I am just going to go with the flow and gauge the kid’s interest and see what unfolds.
George Frideric Handel: Messiah Oratorio Libretto with Scripture Links: This is the accompanying scripture reference for each of those movements. So, I have this printed off and as we work through the movements I am planning to reference the scripture and give a little background for my kids about what is going on.
And, that’s it! It is super simple, but I hope because it is so simple we’ll all really enjoy it.
All on Christmas Carols
As I was researching for The Messiah I came across some old Music & The Spoken Word broadcasts - some of them I’ve seen and others I haven’t. So, I just decided to really make this whole season Christmas music themed. Our study of The Messiah probably won’t take too long and I am not sure we’ll touch on it every day so I think by pulling from these broadcasts it’ll add in some beautiful variety. What is so special about the Music & The Spoken Word Christmas themed broadcasts is that they combine some of the best Christmas music with classic stories. So, I previewed a bunch and just made a list of some of the one’s I want to watch this season with my kids and I am totally counting them as part of our school days. Many of them are educational and the stories are so so well done and have a lot of depth and meaning. I hope by giving more time to these performances that it’ll bring a really special spirit into our home.
I did grab An Advent Carols Countdown to go along with these. I am not planning to use it as an advent (though, you totally could), but just to reference the song’s lyrics and histories as we come across many of them in Music & The Spoken Word or any others we feel drawn to. There is some cross over with the Music & The Spoken Word performances - and all the songs being performed are listed in comments sections of the videos - so I think it’ll be easy to just quickly reference this book too. And, I think I’ll also use it on days that we are shorter on time and may not have 30 minutes to listen to a whole performance of Music & The Spoken Word. I also have Then Sings My Soul which is also a perfect supplement for this.
Some of these performances also have coordinating picture books and I’ll link the ones I am aware of.
O Come Little Children with Rolando Villazón: This is the telling of The Christmas Story in Luke 2 and includes an upbeat and fun performance with Christmas favorites like I Saw Three Ships, Carol of the Drum, Deck the Halls, and We Three Kings.
A Dickens Christmas with John Rhys-Davies: The story of Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol.
Good King Wenceslas and The Spirit of Giving
Coordinating children’s book: Good King Wenceslas
Sing Choirs of Angels: This is the story behind the beginnings of the Tabernacle Choir.
Christmas from Heaven: The Candy Bomber: This is one of my absolute favorite stories. If you’re not familiar with Gail Halversen - he was an army pilot during WWII and is known for throwing candy out of his plane for the children. Years ago, we met Gail so this is an extra special story for us.
Coordinating children’s book: Christmas from Heaven.
Carols, Then and Now with David McCullough: McCullough tells two American war stories and their connection to O Little Town of Bethlehem and I’ll Be Home for Christmas.
Blessings of Christmas with Hugh Bonneville: This is the story behind the song, ‘It Is Well With My Soul.’ It is a really tragic story (but an absolutely beautiful message). If you or your kids are especially sensitive to death then you might want to preview it before hand.
Coordinating children’s book: It Is Well With My Soul.
Brian Stokes Mitchell and The Spirit of Christmas: This is just a really fun one I think my kids are going to love Friendly Beasts.
The Little Match Girl and Hans Christian Anderson: This is another one I couldn’t find the whole broadcast for, but it’s a 15 minute clip of the story that is still really good.
Silent Night, Holy Night: This is one of the Tabernacle’s full Christmas programs, but it is one of my very favorite Christmas stories that took place during WW1. It is about the soldiers who stopped fighting on Christmas Eve to sing this song together. We’re going to watch it starting at the 43:35 mark.
Coordinating children’s book: Silent Night, Holy Night.
There are SO many good ones and these aren’t even all of them, but these are the best recordings and (mostly) full broadcasts that I could find. Let me know if you end up listening and which are your favorites!
Symbols of the Season
Since we won’t have a lot of formal homeschool work I wanted to add something super simple, but fun, that my kids could work on in the afternoons. I am thrilled with this new Christmas unit, Symbols of the Season, because I think my older girls are going to love taking the lead on the cute art projects. This unit pairs with one of our favorite Christmas books, See Christ in Christmas. And, I have a discount code on both of these for you guys.
Symbols of the Season - Discount Code: Homecenteredlearning10 (10% off)
See Christ in Christmas - Discount Code: HOMECENTERED (20% off)
(PS I always love everything over at Little School of Smiths - many of you know I’ve used lots of her other units. Lindsay has such a gift for making homeschool special and igniting a love of learning through her curriculum. If you’re looking to start a new study after the New Year - now will be a great time to check out her other units.)
Family Read-Alouds
We just started reading the The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street for our book club. The book takes place during the month of December and I’ve heard so many people love this series so I am excited to try it.
We usually do our read-aloud in the evenings as part of our bedtime routine and since our book club is at the beginning of December we’re also going to be listening to A Christmas Carol Advent. Have ever heard of the Merry Beggars? They have a free 25 day advent that is SO good. We’ve listened to it before, but it’s been a few years.
During our read-alouds I like to have a fun hands-on activity for my kids to work on so I just snagged a few fun holiday themed ones for the month. We’ve all been LOVING Bold and Easy coloring books with these fun alcohol-based markers so I grabbed a Winter Wonderland book. The markers have a completely different texture to color with and they’re so addicting. I also got this cute clay snowman kit I think the kids will enjoy. I’ll keep these out on our learning shelf so the kids can access them anytime during the holiday season though.
Let me know if you guys have any questions and I am happy to help! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.
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