Christmas School

Christmas is just days away and I thought I’d jot down what we have made our “Christmas School” this year, and how we’ve still kept up our TCT rhythms we love so much.

First and foremost, Christ is the reason for Christmas after all, so making sure the bulk of our Christmas books draw us back to Him is important to me. We love and embrace the whimsy, too, at our house, however, that is most important! We keep our normal benediction table and Bible readings. Aside from our typical family Bible time, we’ve added the Jesse Tree ornaments we painted together as a fun craft moment (please read this as my sole craft moment, not a crafty mom… yet!) and each day read a Bible story, have a memory verse, and they take turns hanging the ornament of the day on the tree. We light the advent wreath and do our devotions as a family and it’s been so sweet. We’ve added it in during dinner so we can get the full candle effect. The book we’ve read through is Unwrapping the Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp.

It wouldn’t be Christmas in our house without the Nutcracker ballet playing on repeat, so naturally Tchaikovsky was our composer this season. For our artist I snagged the book The Glorious Impossible text by Madeleine L’Engle, art by Giotto. It was a book recommended by Sarah Clarkson and I snagged a used copy that thankfully the shop sent it promptly and we’ve really enjoyed it. We just so happened to have been reading about Giotto already and it played perfectly into Christmas School! Don’t you love when things like that happen!?

Each year I gift the kids a Christmas book or two alongside pajamas on December 1st. I may in the future do this the first day of advent or even on Saint Nicholas Day if we can wait that long. Usually I’m so excited to read the new books with the kids it’s hard to wait, but this year we added a picture book, a short story by Elizabeth Goudge and then I added a few Charles Dickens collection books with his Christmas stories inside.

By now we’ve got a really good Christmas collection of books we love and are near and dear to our hearts so it’s always fun finding new ones and revisiting old favorites. We’ve read almost every picture book at least once, favorites way more than I can count, and as for literary novels, I dreamed big… we will see how much we tackle in the next few days.

Longer books/novel selections we added:

• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (we are almost done with this.. I’ve got faith we will finish by Christmas). The fun thing about this one is we saw a musical performance about the story and really was a good one that stuck mostly to the storyline! I think it helped set us up for an excited reading.

• I Saw Three Ships by Elizabeth Goudge (this was a shorter chapter book than I expected but my daughter and I loved it. I think it will end up being her favorite Christmas book, I’ll report back!)

• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (we read this one last year, and my kids appreciated it a whole lot more this year. They’ve been shouting “hey, unto you a child is born!” And it’s been a hoot. I’ll admit it’s not my favorite Christmas read but maybe because I feel like I’ve got a case of Herdman kids at my house at times… I kid…)

• Letters From Father Christmas by Tolkien. This may just take the cake for favorite whimsy book ever, how could I forget!? It’s a tradition I wish I’d of started and cleaver enough to keep up. What a gift this was to Tolkien’s children and clearly beyond!!

• Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (I couldn’t not start it! I blame the Turkish delights!) We are about half way through the reread. It may be one we read just throughout January, too. I think we are half way done though, we will see!

• A Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens (we haven’t gotten to this one yet but we’ve had unexpected travel and weather in the 70s, so reading has been lighter than normal on most days).

• Mom Read: I’m almost done with a Little Women reread. I love it and still identify most with Meg. I’m so excited to read this with my daughter in the future. I know she will love it. I also appreciate the references to Pilgrims Progress from reading them since before I for sure hadn’t. Another book I just finished is the first volume of The Unsolicited Journals of Emma M. Lion. I loved the first one and love I’ve got so many volumes to read through to look forward to. She (Emma, the main character in the books) also has me wanting to reread Paradise Lost by John Milton. We will see if it’s doable for 2026!

  I say yes!

Rounding things out with other subjects, we’ve done tremendous amounts of holiday baking and I’ve had my littles measuring, counting, sorting and beyond counting that as math and citizenship! We’ve delivered goodies to many a loved ones. We also are continuing our handwringing that is Narnia themed (just a book from Amazon I snagged) and our Latin classes have continued as normal. I printed off the Christmas edition from Dallas University’s Latin Through Stories with every intention of implementing but maybe next year!

I think that about wraps us up on school things. Lots of family time and awaiting the celebration of Jesus.

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!