Homeschooling and Making Family Christmas Traditions
I have been reading a
lot of blog posts about how extra difficult it is to homeschool your kids during
the holidays. Why? Simply because it’s Christmas! It’s really hard to focus,
both for the homeschool parent and the child, when Christmas preparations in the
house are in full swing.
"Hindi pa nakatayo ang Christmas tree!" "Hindi pa tapos ang Unit 10 lessons!" :-)
Instead of worrying about our delayed homeschool schedule, we decided to take it slow this holiday season. We are homeschoolers, right? We can be flexible with our study time so there are lots of time to catch up with our lessons. It is more important to create memories and make this season meaningful for the whole family.
Here are some of our
homeschooling moments this December and we’re happy to be making our family
Christmas traditions at the same time.
DIY Christmas Book Ornaments
DIY Christmas Book Ornaments
We want our Christmas
tree to remind us of our family highlights this year. One of our milestones for
2017 is Rio’s growing love for books and reading on his own. We will always
remember that we finished his first chapter book (Charlotte’s Web) this year.
He surprised us when he read another chapter book (The Boxcar Children ) but
this time, he read it independently and narrated back the story to us.
But more than Rio’s
reading level, the stories that we read left so much happiness in our hearts. We
will not forget how Amelia Bedelia filled our house with so much laughter. Even
Lola M finds Amelia’s literal take on her to-do lists as annoying but extremely funny.
Frog
and Toad taught us a lot about friendship and the importance of just being
there for each other – eating ice cream and cookies together.
Dong Dugong will
always remind us to eat healthy and take care of the environment. We admire Adel
of Ang Bonggang Bonggang Batang Beki because he was brave to confront his fears
and be confident of what he likes and who he is.
We plan to make this (DIY Christmas book ornaments) our yearly tradition to remember not only the books that we have read but to always
remind us of the joy that reading brings into our lives.
Parol nina Tatay at Rio
We were discussing
about length in our Math lessons so measuring the bamboo sticks to be used for
our parol project was a perfect opportunity for Rio to apply what he has
learned.
Watch Rio giving
instructions on how they plan to make the parol.
To be honest, all
credit goes to our dearest Tatay. He did most, if not all, of the
work to complete our first DIY parol. We hope we can plan earlier next year to
make this family tradition more colorful and meaningful.
Before making the
parol, we also read “Alamat ng Parol”. This story is included in Rene O.
Villanueva’s collection of Christmas stories (12 Kuwentong Pamasko). You can get a copy from Tahanan Books' online shop.
Mga kaibigan, heto na ang aming parol!
Quotes for Rio’s Ninong and
Ninangs
We are starting our
copywork exercises this year where Rio copies words, phrases or quotes from the story or book
he read. Copywork serves as a good handwriting practice for him. It’s an
opportunity to pay close attention to the details of handwriting – following the
lines, practicing the letters he finds hard to write ( a, d, b, s).
In our experience,
copywork also gave us time to talk about capitalization, when to use punctuation
marks (comma and period). Copying quotes from books we love also led us to
recall the best moments of the story which helped us start discussions about
the characters and more.
Rio will send one
quote to each of his Ninongs and Ninangs this Christmas. We don’t get to see his godparents often. Marami nga sa kanila, hindi pa nakikita si
Rio mula nang bininyagan. Sad but true. May these handwritten notes from
Rio also inspire us to reconnect with his godparents, also our dearest friends.
Mga momshies, what are your family holiday traditions? Share naman para mas masaya at mas memorable ang mga susunod pang Pasko.
Maligayang Pasko!
