Simple Homeschool Advent Ideas

It’s early November and The Season is almost here. The Homeschool Advent Season.

The Season, in our house, begins with a late November birthday, and flows through Thanksgiving, Advent, another birthday, Christmas, and New Year. There is a lot of joy and festivity over this time and my goal every year is to actually enjoy it.

I’ve heard too many people say that they wake up on Boxing Day and they are so relieved that it’s over – the gift buying, the extra food and cleaning, everything that makes a festive season festive. From early on in my marriage, I knew I didn’t want to be one of those people. I also knew that it would take some intentionality on my part to avoid hitting the end of the Christmas season and feeling exhausted.

So how do you approach a busy season and come out the other side rested and ready for the new year ahead? Here are my best tips from several years now of homeschooling around Advent.

Do less school

Since my eldest started Year One, my approach to managing homeschooling during Advent is to just…not do school over advent. We typically take the entire Season off – from the late November birthday through to New Year.

This is the longest break we take in the year, and it takes a fair bit of forward planning – I’m usually sitting with a calendar open in July counting weeks to make sure that we start our autumn term in time.

Not having four full mornings of lessons each week means that we can accommodate all of the extra activities that inevitably come up – the concerts, the carol services, the ice skating, and so on.

Plan gifts early

The desire to sort out Christmas gifts early probably comes from my mother, who just recently sent my siblings and I this message:

Christmas is coming,

The geese are getting fat.

Please send your Christmas hints,

Or else you’ll get a muskrat.

Thanks for the reminder, Mom!

To be fair, though, sorting out hints and deciding on gifts does feel like a big job. It’s a happy one, but it’s a lot at one time. So in early November, I make a spreadsheet, double check my budget, and start to plan out birthday and Christmas gifts – I usually make purchases later in November. Having this finished before we get to Advent is a big administrative job finished and it means that I’m not distracted by shopping during what is meant to be a contemplative season.

Celebrate Advent and Celebrate Christmas

That brings me to my next point. I think we often arrive tired to Christmas because we treat Advent like the Christmas season – lots of activity, festivity, and jollity. Party after party is tiring!

But Advent is meant to be a season of contemplative quiet, fasting before feasting. It should be restful, and a contrast to the Christmas season.

Now I know that it can be very difficult to honor this pattern in reality. We like to stuff the entirety of December full of Christmas activities, and we rarely let Christmas run it’s course through Epiphany in early January. However, remembering this pattern is quite freeing.

First, it means that we are allowed and probably ought to slow down over Advent. We don’t need to do all of the activities with the kids. We don’t have to stuff our calendars. We can pare down our traditions a bit if it is really overwhelming.

Second, we have time over Christmas to do things that we missed. There is time for the gingerbread house, the ice skating, and all the cookies. Even better, when I do these things over Christmas, my husband is usually taking a vacation from work – I practically have double the capacity for festivity because I have adult support and back up!

Keep traditions

I’ve stepped back from social media almost completely, but I do remember what Instagram is like in early December. All of a sudden, every homeschooler is sharing their favorite out of print books to read over Advent, you want them all, and then you discover that the cheapest is £100 because the less expensive copies have already been bought out by other homeschoolers.

A few lessons here, the first of which is to buy your out of print Christmas books in July. The second is to remind yourself that if you are constantly doing new things or reading new books, you are missing out on traditions. By definition, doing the same thing each year (even reading the same books!) makes traditions.

Looking at my Advent and Christmas plans as ways to keep traditions helps me stay much more content with what I already have.

Homeschool through Advent with Morning Time

How do we really keep Christ at the center of the Advent and Christmas season? I think one answer is to prioritize time spent in Scripture, contemplation, and singing over the season. For my family, this means that we continue to do a very simple version of morning time even though we are taking a break from school.

We have had several iterations of Advent morning time now. Some years we have listened to Handel’s Messiah. Other years we have just read books together after breakfast.

This year I’ve put together plans for our family based on what we like and what I think we need.

Our Homeschool Advent plans:

• A daily Scripture reading from the Adventus Project
• A daily manners lesson from Brandy at Afterthoughts. I came across this post years ago and it came back to my mind recently when my children were all aggressively tapping their cutlery and interrupting each other at dinner.
• Memory work. We will do our usually memory work review and add in Isaiah 9:6-7
• Hymn singing. I’ve chosen four Advent hymns to sing, one each week.
• Song learning. We’ve been working on singing this term with the help of our co-op as well as The Singing Family on Youtube. I’m very excited to use their videos to learn two new canons and to see if we can manage learning parts for Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.
• Reading. Every year we read The Christmas Carol and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. This year we’ll also be reading The Cricket on the Hearth, The Gift of the Magi, and the Tailor of Gloucester. The novels will be spread out over about a week each.

Do it your way

I’m excited about our morning time plans for Advent and Christmas! I think they are going to be just right for us. Yet I don’t think anyone should just copy what we do without thought to their own families and their needs. One of the best things you can do to have a simple, restful Advent season and a joyous Christmas is to create plans that work for you as a family.

There are lots of morning time plans out there, and I am happy to let you have mine. Alongside the PDF, though, I’ve included links to the Canva templates so that you can customize this printable to suit your needs – the books you have, the time you have, the ages you have in your home. I’ve used free fonts and graphics so you don’t need to pay for anything. You just need a Canva account.

Subscribe below to grab the printable + templates and let me know about your Advent and Christmas traditions in the comments!