By the second week of December, Mara had a stack of unfinished math pages and a knot in her stomach. She strung the lights, filled the stockings, and planned the meal that fed nine people. Somewhere in there she was supposed to keep school moving too. Every homeschooling mother she knew ran the same private arithmetic: the season against the curriculum. She felt like she was losing both. Here is what almost none of them had been told. The peppermint, the twinkle lights, the messy afternoon of decorating together is not stolen time. It is some of the stickiest learning of the whole year.
FROM THE VIDEO
Key moments from Vintage Homeschool Moms, Episode 452 with Felice Gerwitz and Lisa Nehring:
Common questions from parents
Does holiday learning actually count as school?
Should I teach to my child’s learning style over the holidays?
How do I homeschool the holidays without burning out?
My child falls apart at holiday events. What helps?
You did not fall behind over the holidays. The peppermint, the lights, the hands-on traditions are some of the stickiest learning of the year, for every child.
The Season Is the Lesson, Not the Interruption
Most homeschooling parents reach December believing they face one choice. They hold the school schedule and resent the season, or they enjoy the season and fall behind. That guilt rests on a false trade. The traditions you make room for are not a pause from learning. For a child’s brain, they are learning in one of its stickiest forms.
Memory researchers have a name for part of why. It is called multisensory learning. When the same idea reaches a child through several senses at once, the brain tends to hold onto it. Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste reinforce each other, and one sense working alone does less (Shams and Seitz, 2008). A holiday tradition is that idea in its purest form. None of it is fixed at birth either. The brain keeps reshaping itself around what a child lives and practices (neuroplasticity).
So you have permission to stop separating real school from the season. Fold the holiday into a morning hour, take a week of it as a unit study, or let the baking and the traditions count. It is the same brain science behind why a child remembers a story and forgets the worksheet.
The peppermint, the twinkle lights, the messy afternoon of decorating together is not stolen time. It is some of the stickiest learning of the whole year.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
The Kind-Sounding Advice That Was Tested and Failed
Here is where one warning matters. Sense-rich learning helps every child. That is a different thing from a myth you have almost certainly been handed: that you should find your child’s learning style and teach only to it. That idea sounds respectful. It was tested, and it did not hold up.
Researchers found no credible evidence that matching instruction to a child’s supposed style improves learning, whether visual, auditory or hands-on. The finding landed in 2008 and was reconfirmed in 2024. Yet a 2020 review of educators across 18 countries found nearly 9 in 10 still believe it. That gap is not a science problem. It is a systems problem, and it has run for close to two decades.
For you at the kitchen table, the takeaway is freeing. You do not have to sort your child into a type and box them into one channel. Present the season in many forms for every child in the room, spoken, shown, sung, tasted and touched. That is not learning styles. That is simply how memory works best.
Key takeaways
- The fun is the lesson: Sense-rich holiday traditions are how a child's brain holds a memory best.
- Multisensory is not learning styles: Engaging every sense helps all children; matching a channel was disproven in 2008.
- Protect the magic-maker: A simpler season and a steady routine keep parent and child from burning out.
How to Homeschool the Holidays Without Burning Out
None of this works if the magic-maker collapses by New Year. The invisible labor of the season tends to land on one person: the planning, the cooking, the gifts. Running school on top of it is how a good idea turns into dread. So the memory science comes with a partner rule. Protect the person making the memories.
A few specific moves from parents who have been there:
- Shrink the holiday meal to four things: a main, a salad, a side, and bread.
- Cut the one tradition that stresses you most, out loud and without apology, whether that is the baking or the yearly card.
- Outsource the friction. Buy the gingerbread kit, pay a couple of homeschool teens to help clean before guests, host a dessert-only night.
- Ask your children what stresses them about the season. The answers surprise most parents, and families often strain to protect a tradition no one actually enjoys.
One more group needs naming: children who find big changes hard to settle from. When the lights, the schedule and the food all shift at once, a predictable routine is often what holds them steady. A familiar day asks them to make fewer hard decisions. Consistency becomes the accommodation. You are allowed to say no to the event and build a quieter holiday around the child in front of you. If you want low-effort ideas that double as school, these screen-free activities travel well.
You do not have to sort your child into a type. Present the season in many forms for everyone, and that is simply how memory works best.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
What you want this season is simple: a child who ends December feeling capable and close to you, and a home that still feels like yours. The thing standing in the way is not your unfinished math book. It is a story handed down to homeschooling parents that the fun is time off from learning. A wider system props it up, one that still teaches a learning-styles myth the science retired years ago. You do not need a credential to be the most important teacher your child will ever have. You already are one, and the season in your kitchen is already the lesson. When you are ready for a clear, do-this-next plan, All Access walks you through reading, focus, memory and the skills learning runs on.
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Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
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A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
