Multi-Grade Level Christmas Unit Study
Have you ever thought about doing a Christmas unit study with your kids?
They don’t have to be little to make it work. You can do unit studies with your kids through upper elementary ages, middle school, and even high school.
Oftentimes we moms feel like there are so many traditions we need keep in order to make Christmas magical for our kids.
Why not make school magical instead by using your entire school day as one large Christmas celebration?
There is so much fun to be had at Christmastime that it can sometimes become overwhelming.
Multi-Grade Level Christmas Unit Study
Start off by decorating your school area as a family and call it art time!
Your kids can make snowflakes for the windows and pipecleaner candy canes to make your school area fun and inviting!
Also, consider taking one Christmas tradition each day and studying it out. It will be fun to discover together why we do what we do at Christmastime.
Bible
What better way to start of your day then by singing Christmas carols and reading through the Christmas story as a family.
A fun way to read through the story of Jesus’ birth is by using a nativity scene.
Set up the stable and animals that come with it on a shelf or table in your school area. Wrap up the rest of the pieces in Christmasy wrapping paper and set them aside.
Each day you can read a part of the Christmas story, open up the corresponding figure and add it to your Nativity Scene.
It’s such a wonderful way to read through the Christmas story and remember the birth of Jesus Christ.
- Joseph: Matthew 1:18-25
- Mary Luke 1: 26-38
- Jesus Luke 2: 1-7
- Shepherds Luke 2:8-9;15-19
- Angel Luke 2: 8-14
- Wisemen Matthew 2:1-12
Make sure to mark the packages 1- 6 so that you know which scripture verse goes with each package.
Another great Bible idea is this Advent study through Women Living Well. It is free and includes a free SOAP journal and children’s activity guide.
Math
Here are some wonderful Christmas math worksheets for 1st grade and upper elementary.
Year Round Homeschooling invites us to do Math in the Kitchen and Math in the Store.
Older kids can do these Price Comparison Worksheets for Christmas budgeting.
Language Arts
A good way to review grammar and have fun at the same time is to do madlibs.
Here is a great free download from Teachers Pay Teachers for older grades (3rd and up). And here are more fun MadLibs for Christmas at Woo Jr.
Something fun to do at Christmastime might be to have your child write their own Christmas poem or carol.
Writing poetry is an important part of creative writing. You can talk about various types of poems.
Here is a great YouTube video for that with a quick little self quiz at the end.
Talk about parts of the poem and rhyme schemes.
Have them put what they’ve learned into practice, choose what kind of poem they like best, and write their own poem.
After you’ve corrected their work, they can rewrite their final draft and illustrate it.
You can use this poem as an additional decoration in your classroom area.
Here is a more in depth YouTube video on poetry for older grades (3rd grade and up).
Make sure to download the interactive foldable that is offered in the description.
Also, be sure to check out these great free Christmas digital packs for all grades at YearRound Homeschooling
Grab these 24 fun and hilarious Christmas jokes for the whole family as a printable.
Reading
Here are some wonderful reading suggestions for this unit study:
K- 1st Grade:
Itsy Bitsy Snowman (Kindle version available):
Read Aloud for this book on YouTube
1st- 2nd Grade:
God Gave Us Christmas (Kindle and Audible versions available):
Read Aloud for this book on YouTube:
The Snowman Song (Kindle version available)
You can find this on YouTube as well:
The Berenstein Bears Joy of Giving (Kindle version available):
Here is the read-aloud on YouTube:
3rd-4th Grade:
A Christmas Carol for young readers (Kindle version available):
Spelling/Penmanship
Use this fun, free Christmasy lined paper to practice spelling and penmanship. Details below!
History
The history of the Christmas tree has been widely misunderstood in Christian circles.
It has often been taught that the Christmas tree comes from pagan traditions, thus true Christians should not decorate Christmas trees.
However, if you look closely at the traditions of the pagan Druids, they would use branches of trees on the outsides of their house to ward off evil spirits or bring them inside as a symbol of something alive during the season of death and burn yule logs in celebration, but they never decorated Christmas trees.
In fact legend has it that the first person to bring a tree into their house and decorate it with lights was Martin Luther.
Learn more about this in this article in Country Living as well as this YouTube video:
Science:
Christmastime seems to be the perfect time to learn about the various kinds of precipitation and how snow is formed.
You may want to make a poster for the week and label what kind of precipitation you had at the beginning and end of your school day.
For K-1st grade:
For 2nd and 3rd grade:
Here is an excellent website and worksheet on precipitation for grades 2 and 3.
For 4th grade and up:
Here is a free worksheet download, as well.
Also, you can find a lot more science experiments for Christmas here at Elemental Science.
As always, cooking can be both science and math, and we do so much cooking and baking during the Christmas season.
You can cook/bake around the world, talk about the different historic traditional meals we make and are made in different cultures. This can bring in both history and geography.
You might want to make it extra fun by grabbing my free Christmas recipe cards here.
Music
If your child plays piano, learning to play Christmas carols at Christmas time is a must.
The song „Silent Night“ is an easy song for beginners to learn, and your child could try accompanying your family during your Bible lesson, too.
Learning to accompany others is excellent experience for young musicians.
Piano sheet music for beginners (treble cleft only), Piano sheet music (right and left hand), Piano sheet music- moderate difficulty.
Celebrating the birth of Jesus is one of the most important events of our year: remembering how our Savior gave up his heavenly home, came down to earth to become man, so that we, sinful man, could receive salvation.
What a wonderful thing to remember and celebrate as a family!
Let us know what meaningful things you did as a family to mark this beautiful holiday.
You can find more ideas to bring Christmas hymns into your homeschool with this Christmas Hymn Study series.
Here are more family Christmas and Advent resources:
25 Fun Advent Calendar Activities for the Whole Family
5 Advent Studies and Journals For the Whole Family
8 Exciting Christmas Studies for Your Kids
5 Easy Family Christmas Activities
Get these FREE Christmas-themed Notebooking pages today when you put your email in the form below. Find out more about them here, and find more free notebooking pages here.
