Fun, FREE Hands-on Holiday Lesson Plans for Kids

Have you been looking for fun, FREE hands-on lessons on the holidays? Each of the below lessons is filled with active projects that are both educational and fun! Click on the individual lesson plans to see the dramatizations, art projects, cooking, singing, games, and/or lapbook ideas! Also included are our favorite "living books"/picture books that compliment each lesson.

Choose from:

• Thanksgiving
• Christmas
• St. Patrick's Day
• Summer Fun
• Reformation Day

• Pilgrims Lesson - This is a lesson written for a class or family that teaches about the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving in a fun, educational manner. Children will create pilgrim costumes, make stewed pompion (pumpkin), plant corn, and more!
• Pilgrims Lesson for PreK & Early Elementary - Children will learn about the Pilgrims and Squanto, plant corn, eat popcorn & turkey, and create a Thanksgiving notebook page.
• Thanksgiving Feast, Children's Play, & Authentic Recipes – This includes directions for performing a Children’s Thanksgiving play and eat a feast complete with authentic dishes. Recipes are included!
• How to Make Edible Turkey Decorations - Every Thanksgiving my children and I make edible turkeys to decorate our Thanksgiving table in order to keep the little hands busy while the adults work on the last minute details of the meal. I have included recipes and photos of many of the turkeys we have made over the years and have included helpful tips!

• Colonial Christmas Party - Drink wassail and munch on Twelfth Night Pound Cake while caroling and more while learning about the holiday traditions during the Colonial period of American.
• Christmas Symbols Lesson - This is a hands-on Christmas lesson perfect for a class, family, or homeschool group. Act out a nativity play, make edible Christmas trees for family members, sing a Christmas carol, and more!
• A Jesse Tree for Christmas - This is a hands-on Christmas lesson I created for a two week unit on Christmas. In this lesson the children will make salt dough Jess Tree ornaments as they listen to the significance of each one.
• How to Host a Simple Christmas Cookie Swap Party for Kids - Are you looking for a simple and fun Christmas party idea for children? This provides all the activities you can do to host an exciting and memorable Children's Cookie Swap party that is perfect for friends, Sunday School classes, homeschool co-op groups or classes, family gatherings, and more! Read a Christmas story book, create a Christmas Mouse craft, play the Hershey's Kiss game, decorate cookies, snack on treats, swap cookies, and play!
• Our Top Five Christmas Traditions - This isn't a lesson but instead a plan of what to do with your family in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I have tried a number of different holiday traditions, and these are the five that we continue to do year after year.

• St. Patrick's Day & Ireland: Giant's Causeway, Irish Stew, & the Blarney Stone - Want to know more about Ireland? Included is a St. Patrick’s Day menu, craft ideas, YouTube video clips on Ireland, children's book suggestions, and more!

• Hosting a Homemade Ice Cream Contest - What says summer more than a big bowl of delicious homemade ice cream? What better way to enjoy it than with your friends and family? Find my suggestions on how to host a fun homemade ice cream contest! Also included are game ideas, recipes, and more!
• Back to School Clothing Swap - As summer comes to a close, visions of spending hours at the mall and hundreds of dollars on back-to-school fashions come dancing through your head. Instead of dreading all those back-to-school sales (and the enormous credit card bills that follow), use these ideas to host an fun Back to School Clothing Swap with your friends or school!

• Reformation Day Lesson - This is a fun hands-on lesson on the Protestant Reformation. Nail the 95 theses to the Wittenberg Door, eat gummy worms for the Diet of Worms, create Tulip origami, and more as you learn about Martin Luther, John Calvin, William Tyndale, and the Scottish Covenanters.

Each of the below unit studies is filled with active projects that are both educational and fun as you learn through Experiments, Cooking, Dramatizations, Costumes, Edible Crafts, Games, Crafts, Songs, Lapbooks, and lots of living books!

• Science Lessons and Unit Studies (17 unit studies & 90 lessons) : Astronomy, Geology, Biology, Plants, Genetics, CSI, Human Anatomy, Simple Machines, Electricity, Earth Science, Fossils, Weather, Five Senses, & Ecology
• American History Lessons and Unit Studies (8 unit studies & 81 lessons) : Explorers, Native Americans, American Colonies, Independence, Westward Expansion, Presidents, and more through World War II
• World History Lessons and Unit Studies (8 unit studies & 39 lessons): Tabernacle, Medieval Period, Leonardo da Vinci, Protestant Reformation, Explorers, China, Russia, & Africa
• Geography Lessons and Unit Studies (8 unit studies & 112 lessons) : 50 States, China, Japan, Russia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, & Countries A - Z
• Art Lessons for Early Elementary (34 lessons) : Artists and Elements of Art, Leonardo da Vinci, Medieval Art, Sculpting, & Pottery
• Preschool Lessons (23 lessons) : Horses, Manners, Five Senses, Attributes of God, Butterflies, Plants, Bees, Military, Construction, Sculpting, Science of Bread, Ladybugs, Sheep & Wool, Japan, Lighthouses, Laws & Obedience, Illusions & Deception, & the Gingerbread Man
• Holiday Lessons (13 lessons) : Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, Summer Fun, & Reformation Day
• Homeschool Schedules & Tips : Our Homeschool Schedules at various stages, what I do with my Toddlers and Babies, how to Start a Co-op, our Favorites, and our lessons for Classical Conversations, KONOS, and Abeka.