The holidays are amazing!! But sometimes they can also create some chaos that distracts from our normal school routine. What if I told you that you can easily take the holiday excitement and channel it into "The Ultimate Homeschool Learning Experience."?
If you’re new here, I’m Tonya Johnson, founder of Helping Hearts Homeschool where I specialize in working with parents and ministry leaders who are focused on building a solid foundation for the next generation. I believe that it’s important to stay ahead of the crowd when it comes to keeping the attention of our children. As homeschoolers, we have the unique advantage of being able to tailor our child's education in a way that fosters that child/parent relationship and ignites their love for both learning and Jesus. The world is fighting for their hearts; we need to fight 10x harder.
Whether you're wanting to create a St Patrick's learning experience for your kiddo, or you'd like to invite friends over for a day full of learning and fun, we've got you covered! Personally, we do both. We love turning the holidays into a two week school period. Week 1: We have a ton of fun crafts, learning centers, and read alouds along with our regular school work. Week 2: Spirit Week! We love to theme this to the holiday and end with a "party day" aka themed homeschool day with friends. Below is the schedule we used for our St Patrick's Homeschool Day this year as well as the spirit week ideas we used.
You can download editable versions of these along with all of our math and literacy centers by grabbing our BossKids Activity Pack. By ordering through this link, you'll get your March pack for $1 and then each month you'll receive a new pack with new learning centers as well as 50+ character building and fun, themed activity pages. Check out the highlight video of our "party" day here. So now that you have the 30k foot overview, let's dive in to each subject individually. Some of these are affiliate links, some of these are just links I've pulled off of websites, so I can share certain products with you.
For Bible and History, we used the Valentine Unit Study pack from Gather Round Homeschool. This was such a fun project and heavy on history. I will warn you that the prep work is pretty intensive unless you have kids who will be cutting out all of their own pieces. My daughter is 9, and some of the pieces of this lap book were beyond what she could cut herself. Having said that, I learned so much about the history of St Patrick's Day. At the end of the project each kid had a gorgeous folder full of history, and had so much fun putting it together!
For Math and Language Arts we did 4 fun centers (hands on learning games). There are several for you to choose from when you purchase the March BossKids Activity Pack. We have centers for Pre-K through 5th Grade currently. Two other fun activities we did that are definitely counted as math for the younger kids are rolling a rainbow and marshmallow graphing.
This was an easy way to practice spelling, and the girls loved it! We simply spelled St Patricks Day words: march, rainbow, gold, leprechaun, lucky, etc. by placing the shamrock letters onto the rainbow. This is a freebie that I have for you guys. You can click here to download.
Ok, for science we did two separate project. First, we built a rainbow out of water, food coloring, and paper towels. Full directions here. Our second science project was fizzy pots of rainbows. For this I got a pack of 5 empty pots of gold for each kid as well as a deep pie tin for each kid from the dollar store. We put the empty pots (cauldrons) inside the pie tin and then the kids filled each one halfway with baking soda, experiemented with food coloring in each one, and then finished off by dumping vinegar into each pot. I let the kids repeat this for about 30 min before cleaning up. If you can't find the cauldrons at your dollar store, you can use clear cups. The goal is just to end up with fizzy rainbows. We do this every year and it's always a huge hit!
The scavenger hunt was the main attraction of this party. I used the outdoor option, but there's an indoor option available also. This is also where I've linked all of my decorations, photo props, games, and crafts in one Amazon cart. Also, when you purchase the March BossKids Pack, you'll get a bingo game and coloring/painting sheets that you can use at your party also.
The shocking truth I hear often in my DMs from many of you is that you want to throw all of the homeschool parties, but you just don’t have the finances. I’d love to tell you that it’s not expensive, but I’d be lying. Yes, even dollar store supplies add up.
Now, I’m not saying you have to spend thousands of dollars, but I’ve been in your position. I’ve been in the place where $100 felt like thousands of dollars because we just didn’t have it in the budget 😭
Here’s what I’ve found. Social media is a gold mind for homeschool moms, IF you know how to use it.
☑️Courses
☑️Math and Literacy Centers
☑️Unit Study Packs
☑️Curriculum Planners
☑️Kids’ Subscription Services (Themed Activities)
These are just 5 of 100s of products that my students learn to make through the Homeschool Creator Course. If you can dream it, we can help you create it 🤩
Interested? Click Here for more info.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
If you like anything you see, simply click on the picture for more information.
