Christmas Skholē - Day 1

...or, what do we do in December

Since I first started home educating, we have changed things up during December. Towards the end of November I start wrapping up longer projects, read alouds, topics etc, with the view that when December comes, we will want to be doing something different. For me, I still want to plan and organise our days, but I also recognise that there is a lot of excitement in the air at this time of year. Plus, I have a lot of other things to organise, so Christmas Skholē needs to be minimal, fun, engaging and educational. No pressure then…

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Each year I have chosen a different tack for December, and this year is no different. This year, I’ve decided to mix both “Christmas around the World” along with “The Science of Christmas” and see how we get on. So, each day I’ll document what we do here (please note, this will be every “education day”, meaning Monday to Friday). With the range of ages that we have here, hopefully you will find something useful you can use at home during advent.

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So, without further ado, Day 1 Evergreen Trees:

Toddler/Preschooler

For the toddler & preschooler, my plan is to use their shelf to display items relevant to the theme of the day. So for a tree theme, I put out a small basket with green modelling dough, a tree cutter & some wooden tree manipulatives. I added a set of “bottlebrush” trees that I had purchased several years earlier at Flying Tiger (similar linked here) and a wind-up musical tree that once house Marks & Spencer shortbread.

I also added a page from the beautiful Botanicum poster book (linked here) as well as some of the cards from our Montessori Family Subscription box on Trees (their website listed here)

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Books

What is a themed plan without a selection of books as its backbone…? Nothing, thats what, so let there be books (age ranges are very rough, your own judgement is always the best decider for your children):

• That’s Not My Christmas Tree (0-2 years) - a tactile book from the popular series

• The Silver Christmas Tree (3-6 years) - Pat Hutchins’ illustrations always produce a beautiful book

• Pick a Pine Tree (2-5 years) - a rhythmical read-aloud

• The Little Fir Tree (4-7 years) - a retelling of the Hans Christian Anderson classic

• The Christmas Eve Tree (3-7 years) - lovely illustrations and a interesting introduction to a topic for small children

• The Magic Faraway Tree (a Christmas Adventure) (7-9 years)

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The Science of Christmas

For my two older children (aged 7 & 9), their science focus work was primarily on the following topics:

• Classification of evergreens vs deciduous trees. We started by talking about what characteristics each type of tree has, before using our Montessori Family cards and sorting them into categories.

• The scientific classification of a Norway spruce. My children have quite a fascination with scientific classifications of living things. I think its because we read a book about Carl Linnaeus last year…

• Adaptations of evergreens to their environment. What makes an evergreen an evergreen tree? How does its features help it survive. Ideally, try and have samples of evergreens for the children to look at. It’s a perfect excuse (if you needed one) to factor in a nature walk as part of the day’s plan.

• Photosynthesis. We have looked at photosynthesis in the past, during a previous study on plants, so today we focused on the word & symbol equations

Now, all of these topics could be made easier or more complicated depending on the age/ability of your children. I’ve purposefully not added any detail as to what we did so you can make it individual to your children.

At the end of our discussion, I asked the boys to write the scientific facts they had learnt on some card “baubles” which we then stuck on the toddler’s felt Christmas tree.

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Craft and Additional Activities

Although the science work was available to the younger children, it was mainly aimed at the older two, so I did offer the following activities to the 5 year old:

• sketching a piece of an evergreen in a nature journal

• using letter manipulatives for the word “EVERGREEN” and seeing what other words could be made from the letters

• playing a game of “Match a Leaf” (linked here). Although not specifically just evergreen trees, it did give an opportunity to talk about the differences.

• Christmas tree colour by number sheet. My 5 & 3 year olds really love colour by numbers, so I printed a few from the Twinkl website (linked here). But any Christmas tree colouring will usually go down well (if you’re child is in the mood…)

• making a Christmas tree spiral. a really simple activity which involves drawing a spiral shape on a large piece of green card. Once your child has decorated the spiral with stickers/sequins/glitter or anything else you have to privately grit your teeth over, you cut it out and hang it from the ceiling, so it hangs in a cone like shape. Or indeed a Christmas tree!

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We ended the day by reading and then watching a retelling of the legend of the Oak King and the Holly King. We’ll come back to this story over the winter solstice, but it was good to introduce it to them now.

And that was a wrap for Day 1! See you tomorrow!