Homeschooling in December | DIL Preparing for Christmas

[Music] we usually take the whole month of December to prepare for Christmas as a family so we slow down a little bit do less schoolwork and spend some of this time doing the projects that we need to do to get ready for Christmas decorating baking making Christmas cards I invite you to join us this week [Music] we've had some pretty dreary and surprisingly cold days here so we've been spending some more time indoors getting ready for Christmas us our Co-op doesn't meet in the month of December just to give families a chance to prepare for the season but we're still involved in some things some high school kids at our co-op had a Christmas party my son's literature class had a movie night to go over one of the books they were reading we went out and saw some lights some Christmas lights with some friends we had a homeschool Christmas skate I try to limit what we do so we're not too busy but there are still some fun things that we're doing this time of year [Music] some of the shots in this video are just kind of dark we've had some really dreary days and I see it as my responsibility as a mom to try to keep everyone's spirits up as much as possible Ontario Canada same city and a country home home is a noun a common noun is something that is a person place or thing but it's not specific it doesn't have a name and a proper noun would be capitalized yeah upon a time a little girl named Laura lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin in a little house made of logs do you see her do you see her there in the window look look there she is Lara lived in the little house with her paw her her mom her big sister Mary and her little sister and their good old Bulldog Jack if this is your first time on my channel my name is Sherry I'm a Christian mom to 10 kids I'm married to my high school sweetheart Nelson we've been married for 24 years I love encouraging other moms in homeschooling I write over on the blog rli homeschooling tocom and I show up here on YouTube every week inviting you into our home this is our 15th year of homeschooling and I just want to share with other moms the great lifestyle that we've found in homeschooling hopefully as a way to encourage others as soon as daylight savings changes over our days become shorter so this time from about now until March or April when the time changes back we have a lot more days inside where it's dark and I consider especially January through March the time when we get the most book work done in our home school so January through March is when we get a ton of book workk done probably twice as much but in December we take it easy we do the basics Reading Writing and math and we spend the rest of the time doing some of the Christmas prep we have decorating making Christmas cards making our Christmas calendars wrapp in the gifts all these things this is some Christmas copy work you can find over on the blog my kids use this all during the month of December the notes say I want to be to if you see a question mark then it means like you ask a question alone alone said toad William our first grader is reading Frog and Toad to me Jenna's working on French afon is doing some copy work James is doing his history on the computer this is through Veritas press they're doing Renaissance uh and Reformation this year and he has William or he has Benjamin on his lap which is so sweet so I guess some of my kids are doing more than just reading writing and math but the idea is we just do some schoolwork some of them do maybe they get done and they do a little more on their checklist some of them they finish reading ready and math and that's just been a lot and so they're done but we just take it easy and do lighter days my little guys this day were kind of needy and following me everywhere so I try to find any kind of job I can for them to do and here as I was cutting the sweet potatoes I was letting them put it in they think this is so fun and think they're a part of the work there's one thing that's really important to me that moms know and that is that when I share these videos this is really kind of a highlight reel for us you're seeing the best or the fun parts of what happened in our home school I don't show everything but I assure you that we have some of the same problems you have I have kids that get sick kids that make messes kids that fight we have some of the same struggles here but even with some of these struggles I just believe homeschooling is such a great lifestyle for our family and that's what I want to share with you and how I want to inspire and encourage [Applause] you thank you for great day nice day at home thank you for family have last night with church and thank you for this spirit in Jesus name when you feel overwhelmed as a mom and I I have been there I just know that place so well in the 15 years that we've been doing this and I think that's why I'm so passionate about encouraging others when you feel overwhelmed I think it's because we fail to realize what a noble position a noble calling that we have as moms and I I can't even call it a profession I think it's higher and greater than any profession we are raising people and that's a messy job it's it's complicated sometimes there's no easy answers for some of the difficulties we have but its influence is so far reaching into the next generation of people the work you're doing with your kids today is changing the Next Generation today we are cleaning up the house and getting ready to go out roller skating with some friends there's a homeschool skate nearby today and so we're just getting everything together and getting our chores done we didn't do any school this morning we just got the house cleaned up and went out to the ski get your shes on you want to go you excited want to go roller skating it actually wasn't even that with a kid go [Music] [Music] [Music] and we were all exhausted after the skate so we came home I started a fire my 17-year-old son made a latte for me and him which was really nice and then the rest of us sat down in the living room and did some quiet reading and then I read aloud to everyone [Music] [Applause] [Music] I I [Music] when I think about decorating for Christmas I tend to get overwhelmed at first until I remind myself that I can just do a little bit every day so we started with getting a tree and that was up for a day then the next day we just did lights that was all and then the next day we put decorations and finished the tree and then slowly each day we added some new things a wreath to the door um we got out some of our other Christmas decor and just each day a little bit more or getting something done and this approach just helps me to keep perspective and not let it overwhelm me too much Chapter 30 we moved to Littleton between Christmas and New Year's father and mother found a seven room house on the edge on the south edge of town we are finishing the very last chapter of little britches which we've been reading over the past couple months and it happens to have a mention about Christmas and New Year's but this is the end of our normal read aloud and after this day we started our Christmas reading we started with the Best Christmas Pageant Ever that was actually today and that's a book my kids just love now when I was reading this book there are a couple books that have really moved me to tears not many and this was one of them I hadn't read the book for myself and as I was getting to the end I could feel myself getting choked up while I was reading our 17-year-old son here is working on his algebra too I miss having my older Boys in our read alouds but I think I just have to accept that things change as our kids grow older and um that's not always easy for us as moms but but back to the story it was just such a tear jerker at the end and I had a hard time holding it together the story is about an 11-year-old boy whose family moves out to a ranch in Colorado and they try to make a go of it farming their own property but after a year or a couple years it's just not working out and they have to move in town and at the very end of the book his father gets ill and spoiler spoiler alert uh his dad dies and um he has to take over this 11-year-old boy is now the man of the family family and it was so touching um I just when you read books like this and you make memories with your kids it's something you don't ever forget after our read alloud time we went out into the kitchen to work on these Christmas crafts these are some free Christmas printables that I created on the blog this year instead of making our normal family Christmas cards I'm going to be making these handmade cards or I'm going to have the kids make them and I'm going to put our family picture inside of them normally I make and print our cards from Snapfish but this is a little bit cheaper of an option and just as nice all I have to do is make several copies of our family picture and have that printed out instead of the Christmas card which is a little bit more expensive you can find these free printables there are Christmas cards or ornaments gift tags there's a free nativity set that kids can color and cut out and they can use anything they want my kids turned over a basket as the stable or um a shoe box anything that they you know kids are so creative they can come up with something for their own stable but there are also some Christmas coloring pages that you can get as part of these free templates if you go over to AR life homeschooling tocom and I'll leave a link for that as well below no I'm going to keep them but I'm not going to like like to cut on the last thing I did before my little guys got up from their naps was to decorate the wreaths on our front doors and I usually just cut some Greenery we have some cypress trees around our property and these are perfect for decorating reads I put some on the window sills in our kitchen um and just putting in different places around the house at Christmas time it smells so good and it looks pretty my kids finished their crafts for the day and here's just to show you some of what they made I have a lot on my list that I still need to do for Christmas my husband and I sit down in the evenings and order gifts together that always seems like a big job when you have a large family like ours our oldest son is almost 20 our youngest is almost two so just the wide age span getting gifts for everyone we have to get gifts for my parents for my husband's parents so it helps us to just sit down and work on it a little bit every night together we have some baking to do a little bit more decorating that I wanted to do and of course wrapping all our gifts the kids wrap the gifts for us so that is something that is not on my plate they love doing it they all beg to do it it doesn't look great but I'm okay with that with all we have to do I'm not too stressed because our homeschool life fits around our family life we put our family first and that makes things a lot easier thanks for following along I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms I'll see you next week