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  • 163: Holiday Homeschool: Peace Over Perfection This Season with Kelly Warner
    Feeling the pressure to homeschool perfectly through Thanksgiving and Christmas while also hosting, baking, and keeping everyone cheerful? In this conversation with Kelly Warner from Hope in the Chaos, we're exploring how to make holiday homeschool simple, peaceful, and actually enjoyable—without the guilt of falling behind or missing out.Kelly shares honest stories from her decade of homeschooling (including the year she made her son do school through Christmas break!) and practical wisdom that will help you choose rest over stress this season.In this episode:✅Real holiday homeschool options from keeping rigid schedules to taking December completely off✅How to keep learning simple but meaningful through topic studies, service projects, and family traditions✅Why rest needs to be as much a part of your homeschool as the busyness✅The mindset shift that frees you from the pressure of being "behind"Practical ways to prioritize peace over perfection and connect with your kids during the chaosReady to simplify your holiday season? Grab Kelly's free Ultimate Holiday Planner mentioned in this episode to organize everything from cookie baking to gift wrapping in one simple place!Resources Mentioned:Homeschooling Through The Holidays 2025 The Ultimate Holiday Planner 25 Family Christmas TraditionsThe Heart of Serving Others at ChristmasKelly Warner is a seasoned homeschooling mom from Maine, where she lives with her husband and their four children, two of whom are proud homeschool graduates. With years of experience navigating the ups and downs of home education, Kelly is passionate about helping families simplify their journey and find encouragement amidst the chaos of daily life. She shares practical tips, inspiration, and real-life homeschooling wisdom on her website, Hope In The Chaos, and across social media.FacebookFacebook GroupInstagramPinterestShow Notes:Finding Hope in Holiday Homeschool ChaosToday, y'all are in for a treat, because I know overwhelm starts a lot—well, all the time, but especially during the holidays. How do you go through the holidays? How do you try to homeschool through the holidays?My good friend Kelly Warner is here, and we're just going to sort of pick her brain for some ideas.Kelly: I am so excited to chat about homeschool overwhelm and how your listeners can homeschool through the holidays with some simplicity, and hopefully get to the end of December and not feel like they missed it.Y'all, I didn't really think about this, but the name of her company is Hope in the Chaos. Just think about that. She talks about finding hope in the chaos of life, the chaos of homeschooling, the chaos of kids.Meet Kelly WarnerKelly: My name is Kelly Warner. I'm a homeschooling mom from Maine. My husband and I have 4 children, 2 of which are homeschool graduates.When I say we've done it all, we've done it all. We did start in the public school system, so I can talk about withdrawing and transitioning. I'd love to just help you make your homeschooling simpler.There is hope in the chaos, and life is chaotic, parenting is chaotic, raising children, homeschooling, but we can find hope. I find my hope in Christ, of course. That is where my hope is found, that's where we put our hope in this household.Those people that follow me know that I'm a person of faith, Kelly and I have similar faith, and so you might hear some of that sprinkled in here and there. Whether you agree with this or not, there are still things that you can grab, take hold of, and put into practice.The Homeschooling Through the Holidays SeriesFor those of you that don't know, she is the host of Homeschooling Through the Holiday series. Tell us a little bit about what inspired you to start this, and then are there any common struggles that you see with families during the holiday season?Kelly: Homeschooling through the Holidays is a 4-week series. We're starting November 17th. We have 16 amazing bloggers who are joining us to give readers just some practical tips and tried-and-true advice that works in their home.Homeschooling through the holidays has one goal: We want to make holiday homeschooling simple. For some, we're gonna talk about exactly how to homeschool through the holidays. Maybe you want to stick to your current schedule, your child needs that routine, you need the system.For others, perhaps you're wanting to take a break, and you want to feel okay about that. We cover it all.This whole series was dreamt of—I was thinking about this earlier today—actually in my bathroom. I was getting ready, I was dealing with the hustle and the bustle and the stress of it all. I was a newer homeschool mom, and just thinking about how do I make this all work? How does my family make this all work?It just seemed like every year the holidays brought in more stress and more chaos. I said, my readers feel the same. I know they absolutely are dealing with what we are, there's nothing new under the sun.I talked to some of my mentors, I think I might have even bounced some ideas off of you, Kerry, in the first year of this series, because this was a huge undertaking. This was the first time I had ever put anything like this together.But I had a mission, and the mission was to help other moms who were already in that October time of the year, and feeling the pressure to homeschool well, to host the holidays well, and to do it all with cheer, and with joy, and to never let anyone know that it's hard, or that it's difficult.I've been really open with my audience about the struggles of homeschooling. Part of the reason I do that is because when we started, which was more than a decade ago, nobody wants to talk about it. Everybody talked about the happy parts of homeschooling, and those should be celebrated. We are in the season of gratitude, we are being grateful and having positive attitudes, and those are good things.But sometimes we also just need someone to come along and say, the season's rough. And that's okay. And just someone to be with you.That is kind of where homeschooling through the holidays began. I really had a heart for homeschool moms that are stuck on the struggle, the overwhelm, the complexities, and just feeling like they have to do it all.That is so good. You are so transparent, I know, and that's one reason I wanted to have you here. I remember when I would speak at conferences, and these people are going, oh, my kids just love homeschooling all the time, they just love this, that, and the other, and I'm like, well, mine didn't always love it.Let's be real. I think we are now in a place, especially the last several years, especially after all the COVID stuff, that people are more open to say there really are struggles.What Holiday Homeschool Can Look LikeLet's talk a little bit about realistic expectations. What would that realistically look like in your homeschool?Kelly: If you are someone—if your child or your home thrives on order, it is okay to keep your schedule. Perhaps you do have a more rigid plan where you start school at 9, and then maybe you're done at 1. Perhaps your holiday homeschooling is going to look like we're going to curve that back.Maybe we're going to leave school from 9 to noon, because some children and some families, they thrive on systems and routine. To come out of that routine is just going to cause too much chaos, and that's okay.For other families, and we've done this ourselves, sometimes we take the whole season off. I had one year where I told the kids, we're going to do topic studies for December, not going to assign you any math, any history, any reading. My kids studied geography, they studied history, they studied mechanics, all through topics. One was studying hunting, so he learned about guides and hunting and different rules, and it led to animal studies as well.I had one that wanted to study the radio. So he learned about the history of the radio and radio programs, which does naturally lead into podcasting, because that's a very similar medium.I can tell you, we've done the rigid holiday homeschool, where I didn't leave any margin. One of our very first years, we had a program that had 180 days of learning. I was a new homeschool mom, I am very orderly, very by the book. I like structure.I had divided up all of our resources, I had scheduled all of our breaks, and kids get sick, and I didn't leave any wiggle room for sick days. So my poor son, while the rest of us were on Christmas break, was still learning because he had had some sick days.I made him sit there and do the work because that's what I thought homeschooling was. I was sucking the joy right out of it. When I say I've made every mistake in the book, I'm not exaggerating.It's an embarrassing story, it's a horrible story. I still feel bad for my son. He's an adult, he has moved on, he is functioning well in his adult years. But I started homeschooling him in middle elementary school, and I thought we had to be by the book. I thought the holiday breaks started when the work was done, rather than when we wanted the breaks to start.That is so good, because homeschooling is all about freedom, and we should be able to take the freedom that we have when we are schooling at home, or educating our kids at home. That doesn't mean it has to look like the two-week break that public schools take.I was actually—I feel very blessed. One of my good friends, we started homeschooling when my daughters were in third and fifth grade, and she'd been homeschooling since the beginning, kindergarten. She told me in November, she says, Kerry, one thing we've always done is we take the month of December off, and we make our homeschool centered on Christmas.I was a public school teacher, check those lesson plans, scope and sequence, all that stuff, but I was like, okay, I'm going to follow this, because one of the reasons we wanted homeschool was to get away from that system. That first year, that didn't mean they quit learning, it just didn't look the same.For us, at that age, we centered everything on Christmas kinds of things. When I taught school, every year, even in the public school, we did a Christmas around the world unit. So I knew that, so I was like, okay, we can at least do something that I don't have to figure all out.Keeping Learning Simple and MeaningfulHow can we keep learning simple, but also have meaning in our learning through November, Thanksgiving, December, Christmas, Advent, and all of that?Kelly: One of the best ways that I think we can keep learning simple is to make it relative to the time of year. This time of year, we're in our Thanksgiving and our Christmas season. It is a wonderful time to look at opportunities such as baking cookies for your neighbor.First of all, the serving. Scriptural lessons abound there. You are caring for others, you are being giving, but you're also, when you're cooking and when you're baking with your kids in your home, you've got measurements, you've got budgeting, especially if you're talking about how many cookies do we need, how much flour do we need?The other day, my daughter, she's 11, she wanted to start sourdough. There we are at 9 o'clock at night, talking about ratios, talking about flour, water, in starter, we're talking about how long it has to rise.You can do scripture copy work. It's a fabulous time. One of our favorite lessons that we do is we read through the book of Luke in December as a family. Everybody reads one chapter per day, and then we just have open discussions about it. Not everything in homeschooling has to end with a test.Many of the best lessons we give to our kids allow them to have a real-life application. Perhaps you're shoveling snow for neighbors. If you know a family that is affected with some food insecurity, maybe you're doing some secret Santa stuff, or you're just delivering a welcome basket.Churches often have opportunities for service. If you have any interest in the shoebox program, the shoebox program is a wonderful way to homeschool through the holidays and to really give an applicable lesson to your children that they can carry well into adulthood.If you are someone who wants to have a little bit more in your learning, there are Christmas books you can read, watch the movies, do a compare and contrast. You can bake through the movies. If your family likes, perhaps, ELF, there are some interesting recipes in that. Then you can lean into a study of nutrition.We love reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and then, of course we watch the movie, so that we can have some compare and contrast. It's one of my favorite things to do with books and stories. You can do copy work, you can study the authors, you can study the time period or the place where the book has been set.Sometimes we say that, because we've been homeschooling for a long time. For those of us that have been in this, we say, oh, it's easy! Grab a book, think of a lesson. If your listener is going, I have no idea how to sit with a book and think of a lesson, that's okay. Contact me, contact Kerry, and we would happily teach you how to read a book and pull out those lessons that are naturally just around your home and around your children.Favorite Holiday TraditionsYou mentioned Charles Dickens is one of your favorites. Can you think of anything that's either your favorite seasonal activity, tradition, or something that was your kid's favorite thing?Kelly: One of our favorite activities, and this is more of a family tradition, but it does fall into the homeschooling realm, and we still do this: when we decorate our home for the holiday season, we make homemade hot chocolate, we listen to classic Christmas carols.We just run around our house, we talk about our ornaments, we talk about the things that are going up, because I really want my holidays steeped in tradition. I want my children to look back with merriment and excitement for the times that they had. I firmly believe the holidays are a season, not just a day.My children will say they loved, absolutely loved the year we took December off from book learning, and we did the topical learning. That is not something that I have brought back, but it was a wonderful experiment for myself, more so than the kids. It gave me the permission to let go as we were diving into more relaxed learning.Charles Dickens, as I mentioned, that's a favorite. We read that every year, and we do read through Luke every year because I think it's important.This year, I'm hoping to throw in some Christmas around the world studies. It's not something we've ever tackled, but this year, I only have two—we're only homeschooling two, which is so different, it feels so tiny. I think it would be really interesting to learn how other cultures and even other time periods have celebrated Christmas.Of course, our modern Christmas, I don't think that it's reflective in many homes of what it should be. This year we're really taking a spin. We're doing character training. We're really working on characters and hearts, and really just making sure that hospitality, bravery, integrity, and gratitude—those are some of our big focuses for this year.I think some holiday around the world studies are going to just help pull us back, and really have my kids thinking, and of course, any of our listeners, put a little perspective.We don't realize that sometimes our traditions that we have here in the United States have come from other countries. There's one story about a man named Boniface, who was in Germany. He moved from England to Germany, and there's a whole long story to get to why he's whacking off branches, and the branches end up being the boughs that they put over their fireplace.I have a hard time with this. People are like, oh, but that's a pagan thing. I'm like, you know what? Jesus went and spoke parables about where those people were at that moment in time to draw spiritual truths, and that's what Boniface was doing.When you do start, you're going to learn things in history that are not in a textbook. You're just going to grow so much. I loved Christmas around the world, and plus, you can always throw food in there, and if I threw food in something, my kids always paid a little more attention.Kelly: If you keep little hands busy with a snack, that's one of my favorite tools, especially for a longer lesson or a boring lesson.Changing Your Mindset About Being "Behind"I know some moms are like, okay, well, that all sounds good. But I'm either not sure if I can really take a break. I've even had some moms, what do you do with your missing days? And I'm like, those aren't missing days, those are creative ways you can still count English or reading and all that stuff.But some people are like, how do I take a break? How do I not be behind? I don't want to be overwhelmed. To me, it's all a mindset thing. We've got to sort of reset our mind, our expectations. What do you have any suggestions to where they can sort of change their mindset and still come out with some semblance of peace throughout the holidays?Kelly: That was part of the reason I started thinking about the story that I shared earlier about my son. I was so worried about him being behind in his book. Here he is, I think 4th grade maybe, and I am cutting into his Christmas break while everyone else is pausing, because I am worried about some outside pressure.If you've got mom guilt, it's okay. I've got mom guilt, too. We feel guilty because we care, and we feel guilty because we want to make sure that we're doing a great job. That, in and of itself, already tells me you're doing amazing as a homeschool mom.However, I will say, over the years that I have learned, rest needs to be as much a part of our homeschooling as the busyness. We have got to allow for natural breaks, and encourage our children to not always run on autopilot.American society, especially in this modern world, we are go, go, go. We are always talking about time hacks and efficiency, and how can we learn more, do more, multitask. We've done it to a fault. Our children aren't robots.Our children need natural times of rest, to decompress, to allow our brains to process what we've learned, to slow down. I go back to Scripture. God created rest in the beginning. His seventh day, right after he put humanity on this earth, he rested from His work.I'm not going to go so legalistic as to say following the Sabbath, but God put rest for Himself, and he gives the Earth a natural rest. Winter and the slowing down of the seasons—especially, again, I'm up here in Maine. Nothing is growing, nothing is blossoming and blooming, because everything's at rest during the winter.As the days get shorter, as our daylight hours decompress, maybe that's time for us to just say, you know what, we're gonna slow down too. We're gonna focus on the birth of Christ, we're gonna focus on our families, we're gonna really understand what this means, rather than just check boxes.Because when our kids are stressed, and when everybody's under pressure to learn, is anyone actually learning? I just had this conversation yesterday with my daughter. She's working on the countries of Central America. She just wants to get through it as fast as she can.She's just reading them off the map, she's saying them all wrong, Ecuador, El Salvador, and I'm like, let's slow down. And she's like, it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon! That's okay. Learning can happen on the weekends, can happen on the evenings, and it often happens best when we have our children's attention, when we have their curiosity, and when we can make it fun.Our children are programmed for fun. I go back to that story, my son was not learning that year. I was just drilling him, finish the workbook, finish the worksheet, finish, go, go, go, go, go. I don't think he remembers those lessons. I don't think those have applied.I learned more out of what NOT to do in that season. If we have a listener out here who is struggling with, how do I take a day off? How do we take a week off? What about all this math? It's a 36-week program.It's gonna be okay if you get to May, and you've only done 30 weeks. You can still be done with their school year at 30 weeks and pick up with week 31 when your school year resumes.You can always, if you've got a child who's interested and they want to move a little faster in the spring when the days are longer, that's okay. No one says that we have to finish every book, finish every worksheet. No one says we have to do all 45 minutes of the curriculum every day.If we have moms out there that are struggling, the best thing they can do is say, I feel guilty, but I'm still gonna pause because I know it's what's best for my kid.As we as moms learn how to do that, and teach ourselves how to rest, it will be easier. Next year will be easier, because you'll get to January this year and be like, okay, we're gonna pick up, we're gonna start, we're all refreshed, we're ready to learn.Then next year, when the guilt comes, or the concern about the slowing down for the holidays, you're gonna be like, no, we did fine. We get to January, and nobody missed out on anything.You know, I was a public school teacher for 6 years. I don't know that I ever finished a textbook. Even in math, because mastery was more important to me. I think that is an artificial pressure that moms are putting on themselves. They're comparing themselves and thinking they're behind because everyone else is ahead, and those people aren't telling you the whole story anyway.I love the idea of rest. I probably would get on the Sabbath soapbox, because I totally believe that we do need a rest. Our bodies do, and when I think about between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have four weeks of Advent, and you can take that Sunday and spend some time, not in education, but just discovering what—I don't know the order, joy, peace, love, and hope are the four weeks of Advent.You could begin that Sunday reading something in the Bible about that. That is educational, and sometimes I personally believe that is more important than whether they know what 3 plus 3 is, or whether they know trigonometry, or the law of physics.I'm not saying those things are unimportant, depending on the job. But I think we need to always keep our priorities. This is a perfect time to bring Jesus Christ into our homeschool, into our education.Prioritizing Peace Over PerfectionWhen families prioritize peace over perfection, and peace, meaning their focus is on Jesus, that is the reason for the season. Have you seen some benefits from doing that, or any tips and tricks on how you could do that?Kelly: I have been very open with my first few years of homeschooling, and there was no peace. Peace was not the priority at all. In fact, my priority was doing better than the public school. That's it. I had pulled my kids out, and we were going to do better than them, no matter what.I can tell you that that was the wrong motive. My relationship with my children suffered during that time. My relationship with my spouse suffered during that time. I quit homeschooling, actually, during that time, because I was going at it with all the wrong motives. I was going at it from the wrong direction. It was more about me than anything else.When families choose peace over perfection, as you had mentioned, the atmosphere of the home changes. All of a sudden, kids are okay. If they spill the milk, they know, maybe someone's gonna come help me clean it up, instead of someone just coming and lashing out.We do this thing in our home. We go back and forth with food. Sometimes we have breakfast brownies, because fun. The kids' love language is fun. Sometimes we eat breakfast brownies, but sometimes we eat Froot Loops, too. In all honesty, what's the difference between Froot Loops and brownies? I don't think there is any.It's just a matter of how can we connect with our kids? Jesus never hurried in His ministry. He knew he had just the right amount of time.In our world, we tell everybody we have to hurry. If you look online, you will be told that you only have 18 summers with your children. You only have 18 Christmases. We're told to just soak it all up, and just enjoy it while it lasts.I still see my adult children, and I know you do as well. I still see my parents. We have this fallacy that we need to rush through life, we need to make sure that we're perfectly preparing our kids academically, and we just miss the heart.We need to connect with our kids, especially in this modern world where everything is trying to pull our kids away. I firmly believe that when God created the family unit, there was a purpose behind that—the two parents, the children, and God gave us these children.Some of us have parented through many difficult seasons. If you ask any parent that has an adult child, they've got some stories. It's okay, because we can share those stories, and we can share those accounts with other moms that are in the trenches.Titus 2 talks about sharing, and the elder women are to teach the younger women how to love their husbands and love their children. I can remember when I read that passage and it clicked. Motherhood might not always be instinctual and natural. We need the village, so we need other homeschool moms, we need Titus 2 moms.When the enemy comes in, and he tells us to rush through holidays, or to rush through the lessons, or to just hurry our children alone, or to fix the cookie because their candy cane cookies aren't perfectly shaped, just tell him no.No is a complete sentence, and it is the best defense you have against the outside pressures of the world.As I mentioned earlier, we do a lot of traditions, because I think traditions keep us rooted. It's okay if traditions change, too. We used to just bake cookies as a family, but a few years ago, I read another mom blogger, and she bakes one batch of cookies with each of her children.I said, oh, I love that. So I'm going to adopt that tradition, because the more my kids get older, the more I said, okay, I want to be rooted with them. I want to figure out how to transition and have good adult relationships with them.If you're home right now, it's feeling chaotic. If the idea of the holidays are stressing you out and you're concerned, think about a way you can just add one thing. Maybe it is cooking with your kids, rather than worrying about math.Maybe you are going to pause history in exchange for maybe a movie night with your children. Perhaps you're gonna say, you know what, we need some new holiday traditions, and just hop on Google real quick. I'm sure a quick Google search will yield you dozens!I know I have a blog post about holiday traditions that you can start with your family. So there are many ways, and I think those traditions, and remembering that rest is okay, are two of the best ways that you can maintain peace in your home and homeschool during the holiday season.I will say rest is so important, and I love the idea of winter is when everything dies. But then, at the end of winter, spring comes up, and there's beauty and flowers and all of this. It's just a season of the year, and just like it's a season of your life. Sometimes we do need to rest.I could get on my soapbox about all the health benefits, and all the emotional benefits, and everything. It's more than that, but if for no other reason, God tells us to rest, and so we need to, and there is beauty after that rest, or that dead season.I do have to share real quickly, you mentioned, y'all, the baking with your kids. We bake cookies, but my kids sold the cookies that they baked, and then they used the profits to buy gifts. We would choose one missionary family every single year, and then they would use the profit to go—this is back before you had Amazon and you could ship all around the world. You had to actually go buy it, wrap it, put it in a box, and go to the post office to send it over to Europe.To this day, all three of my kids will tell you that is their favorite Christmas tradition that we did. We also made pumpkin bread, and my middle daughter doesn't like pumpkin bread at all, but when she had to do something at work to represent her favorite family tradition, she baked that pumpkin bread and took it up there and gave it to everyone else, because there were just so many memories, and it had more purpose than just baking cookies and eating them. Or like you said, baking cookies and giving them out to your neighbors. There's so much you can do that can add some purpose to it as well.Kelly: There is. I know you've actually shared that story before, Kerry, when you were a contributor to homeschooling through the holidays, I have a whole blog post where you shared in depth how people can utilize that in their homeschool, and it is a wonderful tradition.I don't even know how I ever got it, but somehow God laid it on my heart. But speaking of homeschooling through the holidays, how can people learn more about that, or if they want to get in contact with you, how can they reach out to you?Kelly: As I said at the beginning, homeschooling through the holidays, we're in our third season, or our third year. This year we launch on November 17th. Everything's gonna be on my website, it's hopeinthechaos.com.That's the easier way to get through it. We can drop the full URL in the show notes, wherever people are watching. We do have the two previous seasons as well, if someone wants to catch up, if they want to see your tip on how to do the baking and the selling.I really want moms to get to the end of the holiday season, whether that's December 26th, whether that's January 1st, wherever, or if you go right through Advent into January. I really want moms to get to the end and be able to say, I enjoyed that, not I survived that.Raising children is a season in life, and it's not one that we need to be surviving. We do need to be enjoying it, and we do need to be finding the opportunities to cling to the hem of the garment, because there are times when it's hard. There are times when it's just downright depressing.This is where the Lord is leading me. He tells us that we can find rest with Him. That's part of the reason for this series, is to give moms practical tips and advice that allow them to remain centered on Christ, remain focused on their families, and be able to get to the end of the holiday season and just say, I enjoyed that.There are so many people that don't have that opportunity. Those of us who are blessed enough to be in the homeschool world and to be sharing our knowledge, we have an amazing opportunity to help lift homeschool moms up, and to share what we have learned, and spare one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ as we do that.That's where the heart is, in this series, which is 4 weeks long. It is a whirlwind of information. We have some amazing contributors, including yourself, and we have some amazing sponsors.I know that you said you weren't sure if this was coming out during the first week or the second week, but even if this comes out the second week of the series, during the week of Thanksgiving, we're gonna launch the anchor post, which is the start of the series, and it's gonna allow your readers to find all 20 episodes in this year's series.Final Encouragement and Free ResourceThat is awesome. Well, that sort of sums it all up. I was going to ask you if there was anything else you wanted to leave our moms with before we close. You said so many good things, but if there is, now would be a great time to do that.Kelly: I did—I think we had talked about this briefly, it never came up in any of the questions. I would love to help your audience kind of combat some of the chaos of holiday homeschooling by offering them a free copy of my Ultimate Holiday Planner.It's just a simple way, I'm a planner, and so it is a simple way for them to just jot down all of the things, whether it's hosting holiday parties, finishing up Christmas shopping, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, or other traditions with the kids, and to put it all in just one simple place.I'm gonna have that link available. It's gonna be down in the show notes, rather than trying to spit it out and have someone try to type it and remember it. Because I really want to help your audience get to the end of the holiday season, whatever that is for them, wherever that date falls, and thoroughly feel like they enjoyed the time.It was memorable, it was peaceful, it was not stressful, even if there might have been some times where it was kind of a little bit chaotic. Because we can handle chaos without letting it overwhelm us. We do that by having systems, by having tools, and by having support.Very good. Well, Kelly, thank you so much for spending time with us, taking some time out of your day. I really appreciate it.Kelly: Yes, Kerry, I thank you for having me. You have a wonderful holiday.Ready to simplify your holiday homeschool season? Grab Kelly's free Ultimate Holiday Planner at the link above and check out the Homeschooling Through the Holidays series at hopeinthechaos.com for 4 weeks of practical tips from 16 amazing bloggers. You can get to the end of December and say "I enjoyed that" not "I survived that"!
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  • 162: Cultivating Joy: Gratitude Practices for Overwhelmed Homeschool Moms
    What if cultivating joy in your homeschool could be as simple as saying "good morning" with intention or creating one silly family tradition? In this conversation with Amber Smith (mom of 10!), we're exploring how gratitude practices transform not just your homeschool, but your relationships with your kids and your ability to handle the overwhelming seasons.From speaking life over a strong-willed child to filling your own tank when you feel depleted, Amber shares honest, practical wisdom that will help you step back and see the beautiful life you're actually building.In this episode:✅How cultivating joy through simple habits like "good morning" changes your family atmosphere✅The power of speaking life over difficult children instead of defeat✅Why remembering where you've come from creates gratitude in overwhelming seasons✅Practical gift-giving traditions that build thankfulness (including a hilarious "most beautiful of women" story!)✅How to find community and fill your tank when you're running on emptyReady to practice gratitude with your family? Grab the FREE 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge hyperlink mentioned in this episode and join hundreds of families starting November 1st!Recommended Resources:30 Days of Gratitude ChallengeGrand Prize GiveawayThe Six Keys to Your Successful Homeschool Year: Self-paced Course & Guided Journal. Book available on AmazonIn Due Season CoursesAmber Smith Amber Smith and her chef husband of 28 years raised ten wild children in southern Iowa. Her desire to help homeschool parents avoid burnout and build their best lives with strong relationships led her to start blogging at 200 Fingers & Toes. That is where you can find the latest articles, product reviews, and new In Due Season Homeschool Podcast episodes.Show Notes:Why Gratitude Can Give You PeaceWe are talking about a topic that I really think can slow you down and move you to a little bit of peace and joy, and a chance to maybe take that coffee break, or a bathroom break, or whatever you need to just get some peace. We are talking about gratitude today.My friend Amber Smith is here, and she's gonna be able to just bless you in your homeschool and in your family.Amber: I really enjoy getting to share with you and connect with the audience, and I'm looking forward to this 30 Days of Gratitude. I feel like it's such a good and important season to remind moms to just kind of step back and evaluate and assess kind of where we're at, and bring back an attitude of gratitude so we can kind of go forward into the holiday season realigned.Y'all, I'm gonna tell you right now, if Amber can focus on gratitude, and she has 10 kids, she calls herself 200 Fingers and Toes, then any homeschool family, any family at all, can take a step back and not get into the pressure.Meet Amber Smith: Homeschool Courage LenderAmber: One of the reasons why I started the blog was because so many people were hesitant to homeschool, and thought they weren't capable or equipped, and didn't have enough of X, Y, or Z. Really the main reason that I started sharing my story was because I wanted to show people that anybody could homeschool.Really, the desire to homeschool was the most important thing. Beyond that, it's just skills that you could learn. I was a high school dropout, I was involuntarily homeschooled for my last two years of high school. I got a job and took some classes at the community college.Coming forward as a homeschooling mom, I really didn't have a view of homeschooling and kind of had to find my own way. I have a heart for moms who are jumping into homeschooling and discovering it for themselves, and kind of making a roadmap for themselves that makes the most sense.I call myself a homeschool courage lender. I want to lend the courage to moms who are starting, so that they can get that for themselves, and then take that and start building homeschool that really fits them and is personalized to their life and family.We have 10 kids. I have graduated 7, and I have the last 3 at home right now. I am kind of on the downward slide. We're all down to high schoolers, and it's a very exciting time at our house, because I get to see the fruits of that, and I get to see the fruits of all of our children's lives, and how homeschooling has provided them with some skills.Cultivating Joy Must Be PracticedYou have made a comment that gratitude must be cultivated, nurtured, and practiced. What does that really look like in a real family life, especially when you have 10 children, or you still have those 3 at home?Amber: I was thinking back, what were the things I had to reset my brain to imagine me back at the table with 7 children, 7 and under, starting our first day of homeschool. Even that just makes my heart just so excited to see it was just an idea at the time, and we weren't really confident about what it was going to look like long-term in the future.One of those things that I think is so important about practicing gratitude is kind of looking at where you've come from and looking at what you have accomplished so far. I think so many times, we get to this certain place, and there's so many obligations and so many things we need to do, but sometimes it's just to sit back and be like, hey, you know what? This was the struggle we started with this year, and we really have come a long way, and we really have overcome that challenge.We kind of do yearly evaluations, and we talk about the skills that we want to build with our kids, or maybe character things that we want to address. At the end of the year, we go back over that list, and we see what we wanted to work on at the beginning of the year.Some years we've missed the mark completely, and we just put that on the list for next year. But oftentimes, as we go back and look at the things that we've wanted to learn or establish with our family, we can see that, oh wow, actually, we did make a lot of groundwork.The Power of Simple Daily HabitsOne of the things as a homeschooling mom is your job is never done. Never. The dishes will always be there, laundry will always be there, school will always need to be done. Without a finish line, I think it's really important to set some artificial places where we can stop and kind of evaluate what we've done personally.Amber: With our kids, a few really small ways we've established gratitude—I think it was a quote from Little House on the Prairie, but Pa said, good morning is one of the best words. I deeply feel that. Good morning is probably the most important thing that we can say to each other every day.That's just a tiny habit that we've established. When you wake up in the morning, when you see that first person, we greet each other, and we say good morning, and we usually give each other a hug. We're a huge I love you family, so we obnoxiously say I love you in our house, and we say it to our friends, and we say it to people's parents.That's just a habit that we've created, because we do love each other, and we want to acknowledge that. Taking the time to acknowledge the people in the room, taking the time to stop and say hello and how are you—those are little things that sometimes we just think are niceties, but actually they're establishing a heart that looks at other people and sees them.That is so good. When you started, you were talking about homeschooling just keeps continuing, sometimes you need to take a stop and look at what's happened. It made me think of the word remember, and it's a word in the Bible that's used over and over.God was telling the Israelites, remember when I did this, and remember this. Now, whenever I see it, I use colors in my Bible. I put an orange rectangle around it, and it just pops out. That idea is used over and over in the Bible, and I think we do need to remember all the good things that God has done.I also like that you didn't say, we failed in this. You said, we missed the mark, and I was like, what a great way to say, okay, we missed the mark, but we're going to keep moving forward.Gift-Giving Traditions That Build GratitudeLet's sort of take that gratitude. We're in the holidays, the Thanksgiving holiday, which is all about thanks. How do you use gift-giving and your family traditions to build gratitude during the holidays?Amber: The first holiday I thought of, was we actually have a tradition for Valentine's Day. I buy a little cup, and I fill it with candy, and we put them all around the table, but I always put a card and pens. I make all of the children write a little note, so each person has their name on the card, and then all of the other kids go around the table and just write a little message to their siblings, just what they love about them.I just think it's just one of those times—we can create different opportunities. I just felt like Valentine's Day is about love, and so it was a great opportunity to tell our siblings what we love about each other.Now my oldest daughter's married, and my son-in-law came over for Valentine's Day, and he got a card with all of the things that the kids love about him. About a month later, I went to their house, and it's on the fridge. Those are actually really meaningful things.I'm a words of affirmation person, and so sometimes maybe our gifts and our love languages we can use to kind of bring out things in other people. You can create your own holidays, you don't have to wait.Definitely at Thanksgiving, it's busy, and so I really try to create some intentional opportunities that we don't bypass and forget. We try to just create some times where we sit together, because the holiday I host, it's 30 people plus at our house.When She Forgot to Actually Give ThanksI know we had one Thanksgiving where everybody left, and I thought, oh my gosh, we did no actual Thanksgiving things. We just ate. We ate, and we visited, we played games, and we moved on, and I just remember feeling like a check in my spirit that I don't want to do this again. I don't want to miss the opportunity of having gratitude and sharing with each other what we value about each other and what we're thankful for.So we try to set a time that we can say what we're grateful for. For me, Christmas is really busy, and so the same thing kind of happens. We host, we have family come in, it's just a swamped, crazy house over here.Amber: I bought—I can't remember who it was—but they had a Christmas tree fold-out book that just did an Advent every day, and it was an ornament that you got out of the little book, and you hung up, and it had a little card. I just thought, I just need a crutch. I need something to help me become grateful. I need something to help me practice gratitude.I love how the Lord had the Israelites build pillars, and build remembrances, and build things that they physically saw in front of them to help remind them of that moment, and to help them be grateful for what happened. When they passed the river, they had them put the pillar of stone so they would remember their crossing and remember what God did.I think it's very on task to say, let's use tools that we have in front of us to help us be in the front of our mind about gratitude. If you find a devotional—the She Reads Truth had some kids cards that had a little Advent plan all the way to Christmas.Finding a tool that helps you be intentional, I think, is a great way to just help you all focus. The kids loved it, so if the kids like it, they will make you do it, and I think that's a great way to have your kids involved, because they will make you remember.Kids will remind you. When I was at my daughter's last January, she just had a baby, and I had the other two. She was at the hospital longer than was expected for various reasons. I was going through this devotional that I had given the kids.By the end of the week, they come home with the baby on Friday or Saturday, and the little 3-year-old at the time, he's like, GG, Bible book, Bible book, Bible book, because every day we were doing this little devotional. Even a 3-year-old, they're like, we've been doing this for 4 days, so get us going.You said something I think is really important, and that is you need crutches. I think crutches are not bad. You don't feel like, I'm not good enough, so I've got to use this other stuff. That's why God's given us a lot of different gifts, to be able to be intentional. Sometimes we have to think ahead, and then we need to choose what might help us the best.The "Most Beautiful of Women" StoryLet's talk about self-care and taking care of ourselves. If moms are struggling to sort of take care of themselves, or to just feel grateful about what God's doing in their life, what would you suggest to them? I know some of them are overwhelmed and not appreciated, and they got a lot going on.Amber: First of all, I thought of a funny memory. I had a period of time where I am a words of affirmation mother, and I felt very empty in the gas tank. I had 7 little ones, and just a high-intensity need life. I just felt like I was not getting enough positive words fed back to me.So I made a rule that the oldest boys, whenever they answered me, they had to say, yes, mother, most beautiful of women.It was hilarious. It went on for a year. For a year, every time I said, boys, go do this, yes, mother, most beautiful of women. I tell you what, it was kind of a joke, but it filled my tank, and it made me—it just really did. It filled my heart.Sometimes a silly game—sometimes just take the stress and anxiety and horribleness out of it, and just try to be fun, and create some silly ways that you can maybe communicate things that you need to hear, or that your kid needs to hear.It was very funny, but it was at a really hard time in life for me, and I really needed positive words. It was such a great season that the kids answered me that way, and they would do it at church, they would do it at the store. It was very, very entertaining, and it just became a fun little habit. Sometimes you can be creative, and you can fill your own tank in ways that maybe just are silly and cute.Building Community That Fills Your TankAmber: I have a book, Six Keys to Your Homeschooling Success, and one of the chapters is about community, and building community. I really think that in seasons where we are the sole person at home with our kids, and carrying the responsibility of homeschooling, we need support.It's really, really important to find people that are maybe in your same life area, people that you can talk to, and people that can support you, and also people who can reflect back to you the same situations or what's going on.I have probably changed friends groups 3 times. My early friends who had kids that were my oldest kids' ages stopped having kids. Then we kind of outgrew those friendships, because then I had a whole bunch of little kids again, so we made some new friends.Each time that we have come to a place where I had a different set of needs, and I had a different set of situations that I was dealing with—when I moved to having high schoolers, our church had closed. We really forcibly lost our community because we were a very rural church, and so when it closed, all of those people lived 70 miles outside of our circle.I remember hitting a place where it was about a year that we didn't go to church because we were kind of in a place where we weren't sure where we wanted to go. I remember just telling my husband, I need people. I'm gonna find somewhere, because I have high schoolers, I am in the middle of just all of these things, and I need support.I think it's really good for us to kind of maybe evaluate and say, where do I need support? If that's joining a women's group, if that's getting involved in your church community, if that's joining a homeschool co-op, wherever it is that you can maybe find a place that fills your tank.Even if that's something outside. I started blogging and writing because that was one of the things I really wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer when I grow up. Working with other writers and bloggers—something that filled my tank so that then when I had to give out and homeschool and do all those things, I had some things that I looked forward to.In whatever capacity that is, looking at somewhere that fills your tank and can kind of give back to you, but I think in building community, it's one of the best places where you can get human interaction that feeds your soul and fills you up.I love that story with your kids. We should have fun together as a family. You do need to fill your tank. I also think sometimes when I write down things that I'm grateful for, that actually lowers my stress and gives me peace and joy, because it's like, get your mind off your problems and get it on to God.Laughing and having fun together—when you just have that really deep belly laugh, it just feels so good. Find ways to add some fun to your family, even if you're a really serious, somber person. Everyone needs to laugh as well.We do have different seasons of life. You might need to find some new people. You want to find people that will encourage you in your season of wherever you are right now.Speaking Life Over Strong-Willed ChildrenI know you also mentioned how gratitude changed your relationships with your kids. Is there anything that you could say about gratitude, about how maybe it changed your marriage, your relationships with your kids, or maybe even the way that you homeschooled?Amber: One of the ways that gratitude has really helped me in my relationship with my kids—I am not a controlling person, and I'm a pretty mellow, even-keeled person. I have some intensely control-oriented children. That can be a conflict, and it can be really hard.There are personality things that we have to resolve as homeschooling mothers that can feel all-consuming, and can feel really difficult. I remember going through a really difficult time with my oldest daughter. It was hard, and her personality is very different than mine, and it can feel personal.When you're dealing with a child who just doesn't think like you think, and maybe challenges you and your parenting, it can feel like they're out to hurt you. That's just because our mother hearts are tender. We want to love our kids, we want to do best by them, and so when things are hard, that can be really difficult.I remember going to my best friend, and I was just complaining. I just needed somebody to hear me. I remember she just kind of called me out, and said, hey, you know what? I'm hearing the words that you're saying about your daughter, and what a brave, beautiful friend to say this. She just said, I think that you should really think about the words that you're speaking, and maybe look at that and see if you could speak life over your situation.For half a second, I was deeply offended, because your friend should hear you, and should hear your heart, and let you complain, but you know what? God bless that she loved me so much that she called my attention to that. I was being really negative, and in my negativity, I was being defeated about that situation. I was really giving up my power and claiming that I was powerless.In that check that she gave me, I really became intentional and started to speak life over my daughter. Even though she was very strong-willed, I just said, you know what? God made this child this strong-willed. That means that he has a purpose for her that is so great that she needs all of this tenacity to be able to accomplish that.If I destroy that, she will never be able to do what God has called her to do. My job as her mother and the person who's helping her hone these skills and talents is to help her use this power well. I started being like, I'm a partner with God in helping this child create her purpose.I just started to speak life over her, and I think that is gratitude. When we can look at a situation and step back and call out what is true and what is real, because we know who God created us to be, we know who God called our children to be, and speak life.That was just one of the ways, and that really was a turning point in our relationship. As I began speaking life over her, we went from screaming at each other in the living room. It was a hard season. Now, she's 25, and I will say that child is my best friend.All of her siblings are kind of shocked that we are so closely knit together, but we did the work. We worked really hard on our relationship, and really worked on being grateful and kind and forgiving and grace-filled to one another, even in difficult situations.Sometimes stepping outside of what you see and just shaping your view of your family, your view of your situation—sometimes husbands can be frustrating. They live in a different world, and they come home with different mindsets and different things that they've got on their mind, and so we can battle, but also we can step back, and we can be like, you know what, I'm so thankful for the things that my husband does so that I can be here in this place and in this position I am now. We're a team.I think gratitude kind of puts us back on the same level again and gives us a heart where, hey, we're equals in this place. Sometimes my husband and I will sit in bed at night, and we just talk about when we first met, or the funny things that brought us together. I think that's one of the ways that we practice gratitude, is by remembering all of the ways we've succeeded, and all of the hard things we've gone through.I think it's important in our relationships to remember the struggles and the difficulties and the overcoming, so that we can get back to this place where our hearts are knit together and we're on the same team.The Power of WordsWords are so important. Words can cut you down, but they can build you up. Too often, I can get really negative and start saying things, even about—I love my children, but they could do something that sort of grinds on me.I have a statistic—something like, kids hear 300-something negative words a day and 17 positive. That applies to probably our marriages, our kids. We need to—you don't do false positive words. You don't just say good things to say them. You need to speak truth to them and speak life.Words are so effective, and even if they aren't acting like it, you can speak the truth of who they are. Like, you're a strong-willed child. God's got things in her life that she's got to be strong. My mom would have told you I'm a strong-willed child, too, and my husband would say I was stubborn.Yet, that stubbornness can be used to be faithful for years and years and years, despite bad things going on in our family and our lives. Use even things that grind on you—speak life to them, and really focus on speaking truth, and building them up, and noticing. You gotta pay attention to when they're actually doing something that you can praise them for as well.The other word you used was forgiveness. We were talking about this at Bible study, because we were going through Ephesians 5 on husbands and wives. We need to forgive, and they're going to get on our nerves. Forgive and go on and let God take care of that. He's the only one that can change anyone.Six Keys to Homeschooling SuccessYou mentioned your book, Six Keys to Homeschooling Success. Can you tell people a little bit more about that, and where they could get it if they're interested?Amber: Actually, it started off as a course, and so I have a full course online that basically helps parents build their own roadmap, because I think so many people are trying to fit themselves into homeschooling, and trying to fit a model or the school.I think if we step back and really ask some deeper questions, we can personalize our homeschool to fit, A, our goals, but B, our kids' needs the best way. It started as a course, but then I thought, you know what, I need this to be accessible to people in a broader sense.We took it to Kindle KDP, and now it's available on Amazon as well. It's the 6 Keys to Your Successful Homeschool Year. I just wanted every parent to have access to ask the right questions before they start.It's just a course and a guided journal in the back, and it asks questions each week. As you answer those questions, you build a roadmap for you. I remember reading online, somebody asked the question, hey, I'm in a homeschool, what curriculum should I use?I just thought, that is a crazy question. Anybody who answers that question to you right now is doing you a disservice. There are a whole bunch of questions that we should ask before that, so that you know exactly what you want.I think if we could help parents ask better questions, then they know exactly what they're looking for, and I want people to start their homeschool year knowing exactly what they're looking for and what they want to accomplish.I have a ton of articles and things, 200 Fingers and Toes, because I had 200 fingers and toes to clean up after for a lot of years. One thing that people always remembered about me was that I had 10 kids, so I thought, I'm gonna capitalize on this.The blog is 200 Fingers and Toes, and there we have probably 300 articles that are reviews, devotionals, curriculum ideas, and just life situations that we've shared about what our homeschool looks like, and maybe problems that we've overcome. You can search by topic, you can search by questions. We've done graduations and college prep, and just lots of things that we've covered over all the years that we've been homeschooling. Just a resource to get information and answer questions.You make a good point, because you need to do what's best for your family, not the family next door. Amber has 10 kids. Maybe you live in downtown Chicago and have one kid in a high-rise. Your homeschool will definitely look different than Amber's.For you to say, what's the best third grade curriculum, you need to use some of these questions that Amber is providing for you, because you need to find out what's best for you, your children, your family in this season of time, and it may change.
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  • 161: Cultivating Gratitude with Your Kids During the Holidays
    What if gratitude could actually make you more beautiful from the inside out? In this conversation with Meredith Curtis, we're exploring the transformative power of cultivating gratitude in your homeschool family—and how thanksgiving changes not just your heart, but your entire countenance and home atmosphere.From Thanksgiving traditions that knit families together to miracle stories of God's provision, Meredith shares decades of wisdom on raising grateful children who focus on Jesus instead of consumerism.In this episode:✅How cultivating gratitude transforms you into a more beautiful person (yes, really!)✅Simple Thanksgiving traditions that build faith and family unity✅The crab legs miracle story that reminds us nothing is impossible with God✅Practical activities for the holiday season that shift focus from presents to Jesus✅Why serving others creates grateful hearts in your childrenReady to make gratitude a daily practice? Grab the free 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge mentioned in this episode and join hundreds of families started November 1st!Recommended Resources:30 Days of Gratitude ChallengeGrand Prize GiveawayGod's Girls Beauty Secrets Bible StudyCelebrate ThanksgivingJesus, Fill My Heart & Home Bible StudyChristmas Unit StudiesMeredith "GrandMerey" Curtis, mom of 5 homeschool grads and grandmother of 8, writes, speaks, leads worship, and loves celebrating God's goodness at every opportunity possible, believing that gratitude is the secret to joy. She enjoys creating homeschool curriculum and Bible studies for Christian families, as well as writing Maggie King Mysteries, wholesome cozies. Find her at PowerlineProd.com, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.Show Notes:The Beauty Secret That Changes EverythingMeredith Curtis is here with me today, and we're talking about gratitude. Meredith, y'all know I run the 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge, and I get guest bloggers to come in and post on our blog. I think Meredith has done it every single year I've ever done this. I know that's your heart. I know that's my heart. Gratitude just can do so many things for us.Meredith is a homeschooling mom who graduated her 5 children. Now she's grandmother to 8, so far, and all of them homeschool. She's a pastor's wife, a worship leader, a writer, a speaker, and she loves ministering to homeschool families. She's created a lot of curriculum, and she just started a mystery series called Maggie King Mysteries.Gratitude as a Beauty SecretMeredith, you have actually talked about gratitude as being a beauty secret. Can you sort of explain what you mean by that, and how you've seen gratitude actually transform someone from the inside?Meredith: I've always believed this, and I remember my grandmother used to say to me, beauty is as beauty does. When I was a young woman, teenager, young adult, young wife, I wanted to be beautiful on the inside. From my grandmother, I grasped that principle that beauty on the inside flows to the outside.One of the passages that really stood out to me was 1 Peter 3:1-7, and how God commends Sarah as a beautiful woman because of her gentle and quiet spirit. That got me on the road to thinking about beauty. I actually have a Bible study called God's Girls Beauty Secrets.When you're kind, when you're grateful, it changes your heart. Gratitude changes your focus from self to the Lord. Kindness changes your focus from self to others. When you're grateful and you walk into a home, or you walk into work, or you walk into your homeschool co-op or church, and you're having a conversation with people, it changes the expression on your face.You have more of a smile, you don't have those frowny frown lines. You have a beauty that emanates from you, and I think people want to be around you when you're like that. They want to be around people that are grateful, because it's gonna be raising them up rather than pulling them down.I'm a pastor's wife, and I see all the terrible things that happen to people. Mike and I have gone through so many trials. I think that sometimes the Lord just has to remind me, be grateful, be grateful, be grateful. When I am grateful, I notice the way people respond to me is very different than when I'm complaining and bitter.Beauty isn't just about a symmetrical face. Beauty goes so much beyond that, because it's your poise, it's your confidence. A truly beautiful woman walks into a room, and she's like, God is good, I'm so happy to see all of you, and her focus is completely on other people. That is beautiful.The Physical Impact of Bitterness vs. GratitudeYou know, as you're saying that, I do believe that however you're thinking on the inside is going to come out in your facial expressions, in your gestures, the way that you hold yourself. I also think, unfortunately, the opposite is true. Someone who is bitter—I have friends that are still holding bitterness towards people, and they're the ones that are in the hospital all the time. They've got illness, like, physical illnesses.Bitterness in your heart can actually mess up your insides. But the opposite of bitterness—you're forgiving, and you're grateful, and you're thankful, and you're kind—and that person, I think, God just blesses. When you have that attitude, people are like, oh, I want to be around them. Who wants to be around someone that's just complaining all the time?Passing Down Gratitude to GrandchildrenLet's talk about your grandchildren. Are there some things that you have been doing, or are doing, to pass down these values of gratitude and of your faith as well? Do you have any traditions that you're really cultivating a spirit of gratitude?Meredith: With Thanksgiving coming up this month, the first one I think of is we have a Thanksgiving tradition where before we say the blessing, we all pass around—sometimes I pass around kernels of corn, there's like this Thanksgiving poem about kernels of corn—or sometimes we just share things that we're thankful for.That is really powerful, because there's always tears. There's always something that's bittersweet, where someone's gone through something hard, and yet they're thankful for the things God did through it, or the people that helped them through it. There's just so much knitting together of family as people are thanking one another.Another thing I do with my grandchildren specifically: whenever they come over, I always ask them, what was the best thing that happened today? And then I always say to them, isn't God good? And then they say, yes, he is so good. That's not necessarily a tradition, but it's a habit that I've purposely cultivated with them to focus on the positive and be grateful.That's so interesting. When I'm with my grandkids, especially if I'm taking care of them and their parents are gone somewhere, and we're getting ready for bed, especially when they're younger, like 5 and under, I'm like, okay, we're gonna pray before we go to bed. I want you to think of one thing that you can say thank you to God for.That way, I'm like, we're gonna think. The only thing you have to say is, thank you, God. It does sort of make them think, well, what did happen? What can I be thankful for? That's such a simple way to say thank you, and it's thank you to God for whatever had happened.The Birthday Tradition That Honors PeopleMeredith: On birthdays, we always go around and talk about why we're thankful for the birthday person. Everybody shares, like, I'm so thankful for you because I love the way you do this, I love the way you do that, I appreciate it. My kids have carried it on, so at Cooper, my grandson just turned 9, and we were at the birthday party.They always start all their family birthday parties with just the mom or dad saying what they're thankful for, with all the kids there. They do it with all the kids' friends there. I think not only is it a blessing to the other children, but it's a blessing to the parents that are there.We do that a lot in our church, too, with people on a birthday. I noticed Paul does that in his letters. He'll say, I so appreciate you because of this and this and this. I was talking to someone the other day, and I was like, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, who were the squirreliest church in all of the New Testament, and he starts out thanking the Lord for them. There is no one we can't find something to be thankful for.You know, that's really important, too, because I have heard people say they're in a really difficult marriage, and they're just like, there's nothing good about my husband, there's nothing good. And I'm like, does he go to work every day for your family? Okay, there's one thing. Do you have a house that you live in? There's always, even in the most difficult situations, you can find something to be thankful for.When Gratitude Shifts the AtmosphereIs there anything else? Maybe you're walking through a difficult situation at your home. Has there ever been a time where gratitude sort of shifted the atmosphere during that difficult situation?Meredith: My husband right now is battling cancer, and it's been really hard on my kids. The Lord has been really good, but one of the things that I notice is talking with one of my children, and we'll both be talking about dad, and then we'll both kind of sniff, you know, like, suck back the tears, and then we'll just talk about what we're grateful for, like, what the Lord has done.There's just so much that God always has done. I think because of that psalm that says, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise—I always start with thanking God. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I just lay there and start thanking God. I've trained my children to try to find something to be thankful for, so even in the most difficult situations.The Miracle of Crab Legs and Strawberry CakeI remember years ago, this is over a decade ago, we didn't have money. We had enough money to pay some bills, but not all. The whole family, we got in the family room, and we got on our knees, and we were praying. We were desperate for God to come through, but yet our prayers were so filled with thankfulness.We were thanking Him for all the times in the past that He had provided. I remember when we got up as family from our knees, we were fully, fully confident God was gonna come through. I remember Jenny Rose saying, well, I just wonder how God is gonna take care of this. I know He will.There's no testimony without a trial. Sometimes in the middle of a trial, when you can even just thank the Lord—I thank you that there's going to be a testimony in this.One story I can tell you that has to do with thankfulness: my niece came to visit one summer. This is when Mike was in seminary. We had no money. I would make hair bows and sell them, and that was our grocery money. My niece was there, it was her birthday.I said, what would you like for your birthday? And then I thought, wow, why am I asking her this? She said, I would like a strawberry cake with vanilla frosting, and I would like crab legs.I took her hand, and I prayed with her this really simple prayer. She wasn't a believer at the time. I said, Lord, thank you that you're the God who provides, and you hear this little girl what she wants, and I pray that somehow you would do a miracle and provide for that. I was not necessarily full of faith. About 5 minutes later, I was kind of like, what have I done?We had this food pantry, and they would have, like, you could pay a dollar, and you could get a bag full of groceries. That day, never before and never again, they had a strawberry cake mix and a vanilla frosting. We brought it home, I made the cake.It was getting close to dinner, so I thought, okay, I'm just gonna have to tell her, sometimes God says no. We get a knock at the door, and our pastor comes in with a grocery bag, about 4 feet high, filled with crab legs. Can you take these off our hands?I just remember saying, nothing is impossible with God. That filled our hearts with so much thanksgiving, and believe it or not, almost every time we face a difficult situation, we remember that story. God has probably been thanked for that story by my kids that weren't even alive then.When we pray boldly and see God answer, it builds a thankful heart in us even more. When we see God move, it helps us when we face difficult circumstances, because then there's a groundwork that, yes, God is good.Building Faith Through GratitudeJust the fact that y'all—I think it's growing thankfulness with our kids, but also their faith. When they see things like that, they do want to be thankful and continue to look back at that, but that is just another little step of building their faith that, look, God came through for us.It's really important, personally, keeping a gratitude journal. If I had to do it over again, I would keep a family gratitude journal. That way, you can record the things your kids are saying, and when bad things happen, you pull that thing out and read some of them.God wants us to record what He's done, and to be able to remember. Sometimes it's just verbally saying it, but sometimes we forget what He's done. The other idea is that we really believe in miracles. Sometimes we don't ask, because we don't think he's going to come through, and yet you just shared stories. He came through!Practical Activities for the Holiday SeasonWe're going to be sort of in that Thanksgiving-Christmas season. Do you have any practical activities that parents could do, families could do, to really build a habit of gratitude in the hustle and bustle? How can we be intentional during these holiday seasons to build that habit of gratitude in our kids?Meredith: First of all, the 30-day gratitude Challenge. That is a great one. I love that it's geared for children and for teens.The thing that I talked about earlier of going around before Thanksgiving dinner and sharing things that you're thankful for. As we were talking, I just thought, you know what I'm gonna do for our church is put a post at the top of our Facebook group, and just put the word gratitude, and I'm just gonna ask people, would all this month, when things happen, will you just post under that things that the Lord did to come through, or answers to prayer?What I used to do when the kids were little at Thanksgiving is I would put up a poster. Sometimes I did an answered prayer poster, I would write answered prayer, and then I would make columns, and then as God answered prayers, we could list the prayers. Or other times it was just what I'm thankful for.There's a craft that I've done, a thankful tree, where you make leaves and write something you're thankful for and glue that on.Serving Others Creates Grateful HeartsI also think just serving others gives us a grateful heart. There's one thing that it's almost the time will almost be up to turn them in, but it's the Shoebox Franklin Graham's ministry. When the grandkids were really little, like 2 and 3, the oldest ones are 9 and 10, I would take them to the Dollar Tree, and they could fill the box, and then I would just purchase everything, and we would wrap it up, and they would write a note.That just instills thankfulness. It could be serving at a soup kitchen. One year, I remember we adopted a poor family, and I remember it was a really dilapidated part of town, and we climbed up these rickety steps to the apartment on the second floor and delivered presents. I remember my kids, on the way home, they were thinking, wow, we're so blessed. When you see other people struggling, you realize how blessed you are.Christmas Carols and Focusing on JesusAnother thing that we do is we sing Christmas carols and have devotions all through December. On Christmas Day, we have these super long devotions. It's basically Luke 2, with a Christmas carol after every verse. We always sing, like, 3 or 4 verses, so it takes us, like, an hour. Then we sing happy birthday to Jesus.What that has to do with thankfulness is it sets the tone that Christmas isn't about presents. Christmas is a birthday, it's about a king, it's a king's birthday. We're gonna make the main focus of this day, Jesus. When you focus on Jesus, even the fact that he came in the Roman Empire, which was so evil—we think times are evil now, but the Roman Empire was so evil.He was born to a poor family, and he lived a perfect life, and how many times did they try to kill him? Finally, he let them take his life, and he died for sins, and he rose again. The more that we can gaze on that as families, in ways that are fun and relaxing and filled with love, the more children can gaze on Christ, the more they will be thankful.I think Christmas carols—there's something so powerful about the words to Christmas carols, especially if you go beyond verse 1. Even the song, God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen, there's, like, 8 or 9 verses, and every one of them is powerful. I think that there's something about the theology in them and the old hymns, too, but especially at Christmas time, the carols. Focusing on Jesus creates a thankful heart, too. Above all.Oh gosh, it's been 10 or 15 years ago, we were singing O Come All Ye Faithful, and we were singing the third verse. There's a line in there, God of God and Light of Light. We were studying the Roman Empire after Jesus' time period, but the church was growing in our history. Athanasius was standing up to say, no, Jesus was actually God. He was on the run because they wanted to kill this man.That phrase in that O Come All You Faithful verse, God of God and Light of Lights, was exactly what they were saying back in history at that time. We need to expose our kids to the verses. Pick one Christmas carol each year, and just sing it all the time. Go into the verses, use it for copywork, talk about what that means at the dinner table.Serving others—we did the same thing. Steve was head of the Benevolence Fund, and he would pick one of the families that really needed help. We'd go buy a turkey dinner for them with all the fixings for four or five people. The first time I did it, I was at the store, and I was like, they've got kids. We should get some Christmas gifts for them.We did that for 10 or 15 years, and would take it to a family that didn't have much. It really puts your kids in—it gives perspective to what is going on around us. Too often, we see the people that seem to have more than us, and we don't always see the people that have less than us.Resources From MeredithIf people want to reach out to you, Meredith, what would be the best way to find out more about you?Meredith: I do have two resources that I think people would enjoy. One is called Celebrate Thanksgiving, and it has hymns and prayers and poems. It has the entire story of the pilgrims in it from going to Holland, and then coming back, and then going to the New World.It has a lot of different Thanksgiving things, like the Macy's Parade. Then it talks about how to plan Thanksgiving festivities, like a pie breakfast or a praise and prayer brunch, or the big traditional family dinner, or a family football game. It's got a lot of different social things that you can plan. Some are really simple, some are more challenging, and then planner sheets to do it.The other book is called Jesus Fill My Heart and Home, and it's a Bible study. It talks about, first of all, letting Jesus live and abide in our hearts. Then it talks about how to bring the presence of God into your home in a really practical way. It touches on cleaning and all kinds of aspects of homemaking, but it does have a great chapter on holidays.It goes through the different holidays and how to celebrate holidays with a Christ-centered focus. Those are available at PowerlineProd.com. I have a store, lots of resources, lots of curriculum, lots of high school classes, and Christmas unit studies.I also have a blog on the site, PowerlineProd.com, and if you go there, there's links to our Facebook group, Powerline Productions. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and everything else from there. I'd love to hear from you.Final EncouragementAs we close out, is there anything that you would like to leave our audience with?Meredith: Yes, I would like to say this. Life is hard. I'm sure some of you listening are going through challenges, maybe challenges with homeschooling your kids, maybe grown children who've wandered from the faith, maybe health challenges.Jesus promised—the least favorite promise in all of the New Testament is, in this world, you will have trouble. But it doesn't stop there. It goes on and it says, take heart, because I have overcome the world.I just want to remind you that Jesus has overcome the world, that He is for you, not against you, and that if you put your hope in Him and your trust in Him, He will pour out grace and provision for everything you go through in this life. He will open your eyes to see so much beauty, and so many blessings, and so many people who end up coming in and just wrapping their arms around you and loving you that you don't expect.Draw near to Him, He will draw near to you, and eventually, one day, if you know Him and are born again, you will be with Him in heaven forever. It starts with just opening your eyes and being grateful, but there is so much more.Ready to transform your home with thanksgiving? Sign up for the free 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge at HowToHomeschoolMyChild.com/gratitudechallenge. Join hundreds of families cultivating gratitude together starting November 1st!
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  • 160: Real Gratitude Examples to Stop Complaining and Find Peace
    What if 5 minutes could completely shift your perspective from overwhelm to peace? In this episode, we're diving into powerful gratitude examples from history and my own life that prove thanksgiving isn't just feel-good advice—it actually changes your brain, your home atmosphere, and your children's mental health.From Abraham Lincoln declaring Thanksgiving during the Civil War to Corrie ten Boom thanking God for fleas in a concentration camp, you'll discover how gratitude transforms even the hardest circumstances into blessings.In this episode:✅2 practical activities you can do to go from complaining to gratitude✅3 real gratitude examples that prove thankfulness changes everything✅The 5-minute kitchen table practice that pulled me out of a breakdown and into peace✅Scientific proof that gratitude increases joy, decreases anxiety, and improves sleep✅How to raise grateful kids who are more satisfied, happier, and mentally healthier✅Daily thankfulness practices you can start today to shift your family's atmosphere from complaining to contentmentReady to transform your home with thankfulness? Grab the free 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge mentioned in this episode and join hundreds of moms starting November 1st!Show NotesWhen Complaining Takes Over Your MorningIt's Tuesday morning. You get up, you get breakfast ready, and your kids come in complaining, complaining, complaining. All of a sudden, someone spilled their milk, and the phone is buzzing, and before you realize it, you are mentally listing everything that's wrong.I'm going to share a way to flip the switch in your head and get back into a place of peace, a place of gratitude. Today, we are talking about changing complaining to thankfulness, to gratitude. I'm going to be giving you several gratitude examples along the way.Abraham Lincoln's Example During America's Darkest HourLet's start with Abraham Lincoln. Back in 1863, the war between the states was tearing America apart. Families were divided, thousands were dying, no one knew what the future held. And President Lincoln declared a National Day of Thanksgiving.He knew that the attitude of thanksgiving could actually change our country. He wrote, "Year filled with blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies, gracious gifts of Most High God." He was looking to God to say, even though everything around us is falling apart, we are gonna look up, and we are going to say thank you to God.So when everything in your life feels chaotic, you can still choose to focus on God's goodness.The Kitchen Table That Changed EverythingSeveral years ago, I was having a mental-emotional breakdown. In our house, I was walking back and forth, just reeling out in my head all the things I wanted to tell all the people that were giving me a hard time.And all of a sudden, I was like, stop, Kerry. Just stop. I went to the kitchen table, I just grabbed a piece of regular notebook paper, and I started writing down anything I could think of to be thankful for. It could have been a blue sky outside, a hot cup of coffee, I don't know. But I went and just wrote everything down.Got all the way down the list, and even got to the top, and started a second column. Almost to the bottom, I quit thinking about the things that God had given me, things to be thankful for, and I started to write down things about God. I started to praise Him for who He was in my life.By the time I finished that list, peace came over me. There was joy in my heart, because I knew that God was taking care of me, and it really didn't matter about all the craziness.Recognizing the Enemy's AttackMaybe your marriage is falling apart. Maybe you're rejected by your friends, or your mother-in-law's giving you a hard time. Maybe you're just totally overwhelmed, because you got 5 kids under the age of 7, and you're trying to homeschool a few of them.That is the enemy attacking you, and you can change that overwhelmed, rejected attitude to something positive. You need to realize that the negative voice and all those bad things is not yours. It is the enemy attack. He is trying to get you to think about you, your circumstances, instead of God and trusting in a faithful God.It only took me about 5 minutes, my perspective changed, and my heart and soul changed as well. My self-pity changed to praising God for His faithfulness, His character, and His provision that's always there.The Science Behind GratitudeI've been keeping a gratitude journal since about 2010 or 2011. This is actually my second gratitude journal. I actually hit 10,000 items earlier this year, and I know that keeping that journal changes the way I think.It's not just God saying this, which is all that really matters, but there is scientific evidence that gratitude and thankfulness changes the way we think. Research shows that gratitude increases our joy and our contentment. It decreases our anxiety and our depression. It even helps you sleep better and gives you a stronger immune system.If you are stressed out, I highly recommend that every day, you start a gratitude journal.Corrie ten Boom's Gratitude Example: Even for FleasLet's talk about Corrie ten Boom in the middle of World War II. Her family housed Jews up in the attic, and eventually they got caught. Corrie and her sister Betsy were sent to Ravensbrook, one of the worst concentration camps in World War II.The barracks were overcrowded, they were cold, and there were fleas everywhere. Her sister insisted, we have got to thank God for everything, even the fleas. Well, Corrie thought she had lost her mind. Seriously? You want me to say thank you for fleas?Let me tell you, those fleas were a blessing from God. They discovered that those fleas kept the guards away and gave Corrie and Betsy time to share Jesus, to share things about the Bible, to have prayer meetings in their little barracks, without any interruption. Those guards didn't want you talking about God, but they were staying far away from the fleas.Betsy knew something: We can thank God for even the hard times.Finding Blessings in Your Hardest CircumstancesIt's hard to say thank you that someone rejected me, or thank you that I have a child that's not walking with God. You're not thanking Him for that, but we can say, God, thank you for your faithfulness in the midst of this situation.The things that we complain about the most are sometimes blessings in disguise. God uses anything for our good. Over 9 years ago, my husband left, and I would never wish this on anyone. It has been the hardest thing I have ever walked through in my life.But I remember about 2 years ago, I was sitting with my dad, and I said, Dad, I would never wish this on anyone, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. I am closer to God than I have ever been.That rejection, that hard time, the suffering, the trials that I continue to walk through—when you change your attitude to gratitude, it can sometimes become a blessing, and it is a true blessing.Raising Grateful KidsWhat about my kids? My kids were complaining, everything's falling apart. If you can raise grateful kids, then they will be more satisfied with their life, they will have happier emotions, and they will actually have better mental health.The key is you, Mom. When you are more grateful, your children will express more gratitude. Steve and I said thank you to our kids all the time, and we told our kids to say thank you when they're young. Now, as they grew up, they just naturally said it.I've had parents say, Hunter or Gentry or Ashley, they're the only ones that said thank you for the meal when they came over. That was because we modeled it, and it became a part of who they are in their mind and in their heart.It's not just changing their attitude for today, it's modeling a life skill for children for the rest of their lives.How Gratitude Activates the BrainWhen you are thankful for things, you activate dopamine. Dopamine is that happiness neurotransmitter. As we are grateful, it will happen to us, and as we model it for our kids, it will happen to the kids.Let's face it, it is biblical as well. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God." It is not an option. God's will is for you and me to give thanks.Teaching gratitude to our kids moves them from being entitled to a heart focused on Jesus.George Washington Carver's Daily PracticeGeorge Washington Carver grew up born into slavery in 1864. He was orphaned as an infant, he had a chronic illness, he was denied an education, and yet he grew up to be a celebrated scientist and inventor.He had a daily practice. He would walk in the woods at dawn, and he would look for little bitty things in the woods to say thank you to God. He said, "I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through which God speaks."When I go for a walk and I hear the birds sing, I'm like, oh, thank you, God. When I walk outside and see a beautiful sunset or sunrise, thank you, God. When I see green leaves on the tree, thank you, God.Do you make it a practice to say thank you all day long? Gratitude in the simple things leads to extraordinary discoveries.Gratitude Is a ChoiceListen, if you're multitasking, come back to me. Gratitude does not require perfect circumstances. It's a choice that opens our eyes to the possibilities of what is out there.Practical Ways to Practice Gratitude DailyI suggest daily thank God for at least one thing in your life, or your family, or your kids. Your family and kids should start to participate. Model your attitude of gratitude, and let them see that you keep a gratitude journal. Rest in God—He is always in control, no matter what your circumstances are.Find something that you already do every day. Like, we ate meals together. So maybe you keep all the gratitude challenges at the meal table, and after breakfast, lunch, or dinner, everyone writes one thing down that they are thankful for.Maybe it's during your morning time, basket time, whatever that family time is. It only takes—it didn't even take 5 minutes sometimes. Each person can share what they're thankful for, and you can write that down.With preschoolers, you can use prompts, and they can just tell it to you, you can write it down. Maybe if they're able to draw a picture, they just keep a little notebook of everything that they're thankful for. As they get older, they can actually write words.With older kids, I would encourage them to write at least 3 things daily. That changes the neurons in your head and the way you think, because you are changing from negative, complaining thinking to positive, thankful thinking.Anchor Your Practice in ScriptureChoose one Bible verse about thanksgiving and practice it all of November. You could use 1 Thessalonians 5:18, "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God." Simple.Practice it at the dinner table every single night. Say it together, let them take turns saying it, whatever the verse is. This will anchor your gratitude practice, your gratitude actions in God's Word.It also teaches our kids to focus on Jesus and what He's doing, not just positive thinking. This isn't all about positive thinking. This is about following God, because we know that Jesus and the Holy Spirit is what can change what's inside.Start Today, Not When Crisis HitsDon't wait for crisis, like I did that time, to start practicing gratitude. Start it right now. You don't need perfect circumstances, you just need to start!Go get the free 30 Days of Gratitude Challenge. We're gonna start as a group on November 1st. You can start whenever you would like. You'll get free printables for the whole family, daily blog posts—I have 30 blog posts coming out in November. Some of them are crafts, some of them are activities, some of them are about the history of Thanksgiving, some of them are about being thankful in hard times.This is a proven strategy to shift your family's atmosphere, home atmosphere, and your kids' minds, and yours. You'll have a community of moms doing this together as well.Sign up now at HowToHomeschoolMyChild.com/gratitudechallenge. Choose gratitude together this November. Show your kids your thankful heart, and how it changes everything, and you can create a peaceful home that you deserve.
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  • 159: How to Be More Present This Christmas Without the Holiday Stress
    What if Christmas wasn't about doing more, but learning how to be more present with your family? In this episode, we're diving into why holiday perfection is stealing your joy and how you can shift from chaos to connection this season.We're talking about practical ways to focus on what really matters—faith, family, and freedom from the pressure to do everything perfectly. You'll discover how to choose meaningful traditions over Pinterest-perfect moments, and how to prepare your heart during Advent so you can actually enjoy Christmas morning.In this episode you will learn:✅Why scrolling social media makes you feel behind and stressed✅How to shift from perfection to presence during the holidays✅3 keys to a more peaceful Christmas✅Simple ways to create meaningful traditions your kids will actually remember✅How to use Advent to prepare your heart, not just check off a to-do listReady to make this your most peaceful Christmas yet? Grab the Christmas Celebration Bundle mentioned in this episode at HowToHomeschoolmychild.com/ChristmasbundleShow Notes:How to Be More Present This Christmas (Without the Holiday Stress)Hey everyone, Kerry Beck here with Homeschool Coffee Break, where we help you stop stress so you can take a coffee break. Let me tell you, the topic we're talking about today can stress you out, but I'm here to give you some ideas and some solutions.Yes, you can see the background, it's one of my first episodes for this Christmas season, and I think it's really important to figure out what happens when you let go of holiday perfection. What if Christmas wasn't about doing more, but being more present?The Pressure of Holiday PerfectionYou know, I used to try to make everything, well, back in the day, magazine perfect. Y'all are dealing with making everything Pinterest perfect, or Instagram perfect. I used to get a magazine, Southern Living. Actually, I got a whole two rows of them, old copies, and Southern Living had always, around November, December, they'd have an article about decorating the tree, and having the perfect little snacks, and everything was just perfect.Only, anytime I tried that, it didn't work. So, I sort of gave up on it. Some of you may be thinking about, oh, I gotta get the perfect matching pajamas, or just the flawless photos, elaborate crafts. But by Christmas Eve, for myself, and especially Christmas Day after we'd opened gifts, I was exhausted and snappy, and as I've told you before, crying in the car on the freeway.I realized after a couple years like that, that Jesus never asked for perfection. He asked for presence. He just wants our presence with Him.Letting Go of the Comparison TrapHow can we let go of that perfection? And you may not be a perfectionist. But you may still be scrolling social media going, oh, I wish I had… oh, look at them, look at that.That is such a false hope. They are showing you their highlight reels. They are not giving you an accurate picture of what life is like. Because we scroll through Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and we feel behind already. We want our kids to have magical memories, but we forget that we set the tone as well.You see, when we do that, when we are constantly comparing ourselves to other people, we feel guilty. We feel overwhelmed. We feel stressed. And there's one more. Oh, we miss the joy of the season! You know, the season's supposed to be joyful and joy to the world. It is not happening.Your kids are not going to remember the perfect decorations, or the perfect decorating, tree decorating evening. They're going to remember the times as a family. They're gonna remember your peace and your presence with them. We don't need to be doing more, we just need to be present with our family.From Chaos to ConnectionSo how can we go from chaos to connection? Letting go of perfection actually opens the door for true connection.Think about it. What if on Christmas morning, y'all just had a great morning? If you open gifts in, that's great, but you're calm, your kids are happy, the home is at peace. Wouldn't that be awesome?But it doesn't just happen like this. We need to be intentional about it, and that is why I want to talk to you about that. We can use that time of Advent. Advent starts about 4 weeks before Christmas, and every week we can be doing different activities that can prepare our heart.Sometimes it's a heart surgery. We need to look at ourselves and see what do we need to do before God? Are there some sins that we need to confess? And we need to model that, and then show our kids as well. And then the different activities need to be purposeful and intentional.The Three Keys: Faith, Family, and FreedomThe key here is making a shift to faith, family, and freedom.Faith. Putting Christ back at the center. Back at the center of your celebration.Family, focusing on meaningful moments together, not the perfect photo.And then freedom, releasing the pressure to do everything perfect. And just have joy instead!You see, we need to spend that time personally, in faith, with our Lord and Savior, spending time, preparing our hearts for that celebration, and then we need to spend time as a family. That will draw the connections first. You've got up and down connection with God, then we have horizontal connection with our family. And when we build those connections, I think we grow into some freedom, that we don't have to do everything perfect.Practical Ways to Be More PresentSo, what are some practical ways? I would encourage you to pick one or two meaningful traditions that you might do year after year.For our family, I think my kids will all tell you their favorite Christmas tradition was baking pumpkin bread and cookies to sell. They took the profit, and they bought a gift for one missionary family. Every year, we picked a different missionary family. And to this day, they've all said something about that. It's one of their favorite traditions.We did that every year, and they would sell the baked goods, and then we would go to the store and buy it with whatever profit they had, because they had to pay me back for all the ingredients and that type of thing.So, pick one or two traditions. Say no to the activities that drain your family, that drain your spirit, your husband's spirit, your kid's spirit. Focus on time together, not just checking off the boxes. I did that for several years and realized that was not helping our family.I think it's really important that we use that time before Christmas, not as a to-do list with a checklist, but to prepare your heart, prepare your heart for that celebration.The Christmas Celebration BundleNow, it would be nice to have something that's sort of all set out for you, and that's why I did pull together our Christmas Celebration Bundle. I'm going to say this quickly. It's for some of you, it's not for others of you, but it's gonna go back to faith, family, and freedom.We've got items in this bundle, it's all digital, it's a Christmas celebrations bundle.Faith. We have a Star of Bethlehem. This really ties together Bible and history and science, all sorts of things, research, writing, and so this is analyzing from Matthew 2 what is the Star of Bethlehem. We have copy work.We also have fun family activities. This is our Christmas celebration eBook. Celebrate Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. And for those of you that don't know what Epiphany is, here's a little something. It's the 12 days after Christmas, because the Feast of Epiphany is on January 6th.That is the day they… we celebrate the wise men arriving. Now, it didn't really happen in 6 days, but that is the day that we celebrate the wise men going to see Jesus. And so there are traditions, activities, all sorts of things in this one book.And you can see these are for all different ages. We have Christmas around the world. This is more for junior high, elementary, and preschool, and you've got 5 countries that we're gonna, that you can use this as well, with books and crafts and songs and everything. And then we've got Christmas Carol Book, your kids can learn biblical Christmas songs, they can copy it, there's all sorts of things, but that will tie together your faith, your family, and then hopefully give you some freedom, because it's sort of all set out for you. And that is something that can be used year after year after year.Brooke said she got this bundle, and it helped her save time, and guided her to teach her kids the true meaning of Christmas. Another mom, Elena, told me that she became much more intentional with their learning during the Christmas season. She was excited to dive into Bethlehem Star and learn more about astronomy and astrology.That is a bundle available. You can go to HowToHomeschoolmychild.com/Christmasbundle, and you can get that there.Make Christ the CenterYou need to think about this. You don't need a perfect plan, you just need a plan, just a simple one that keeps you focused on Jesus Christ.So let's make this year the year that Christ takes center stage. Christ takes over the heart of you, your kids, and your home.For unto us is born a child, unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.Ready to make this your most peaceful Christmas? Grab the Christmas Celebration Bundle at HowToHomeschoolmychild.com/Christmasbundle!
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Homeschool Coffee Break helps you stop overwhelm and gain confidence so you know you're doing enough with your kids' education. Our top-notch interviews, practical tips & tricks, and real solutions will give you confidence in your homeschool.
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