I love Christmas and am so excited that it is coming up! One of my favorite things to do this time of year is plan our family's annual countdown to Christmas. Each day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I have our kids open a holiday-themed children's book. We read it together and do an activity (I like to have the activities and book correspond as often as possible). I have spent years building up our library of Christmas books. Thriftbooks has been one of my favorite websi

November is upon us and that just puts the holiday feeling in the air! I love the holidays and Christmas, but we also love to slow down in November and enjoy focusing on Thanksgiving and gratitude. One of my favorite traditions that we have in November is our gratitude tree. We started this tradition years ago when we only had two children old enough to really participate and every year, we all love doing it. The tradition is that every person gets to add a "grateful leaf" to

When I get out our Halloween decorations, I also haul up our big pile of seasonal books to read throughout the month together. It's both my favorite thing and my kids' favorite thing! We love our "Halloween" books--some are actually about Halloween, some are a little creepy or about Halloween related things like monsters, and some are simply books perfect for fall. Today I am sharing some of our FAVORITE books to read at Halloween time! Goodnight Goon by Michael Rex We love G

There is nothing I love more than reading holiday-themed books with my kids! Especially as fall comes and it means the start of the holiday season, there is something about pulling out holiday themed books and snuggling up on the couch together. It's especially fun with young toddlers and preschoolers, who are so excited about the upcoming holiday. Here is a list of my favorite Halloween and fall themed books that are perfect for toddlers and preschoolers! The Spooky Wheels o

One of my favorite parts of homeschooling is during the holidays when we can theme a lot of our school activities around the holiday! With a baby, I'm feeling a little behind, but I have started planning some Halloween homeschool activities to do with the kids this Halloween and I wanted to share them here! Halloween Crafts Skeleton Paper Garland For this activity, you use paper chains to make a large skeleton . We have already done a few simple skeleton activities this year

Halloween is not the biggest holiday at our house (that would definitely be Christmas), but I do love celebrating holidays with kids and my kids love this time of year! We stick with "fun" for Halloween with a touch of creepy atmosphere rather than scary or gory. One thing I love to remember about traditions is that traditions are here to serve our family, not the other way around ! They can also change and adapt. One example of this is that we have had a tradition for years

My kids love Halloween (especially our middlest child) and I love holidays! However, we are not a family who loves gore or super scary movies (my kids are also not super sensitive). I have a fun list of "Halloween-y" movies that fit our family just right that I love to pull out each fall. Some of these are more scary than others, but all of them have been fun family movies to watch together. These are our favorite movies to watch each year! Room on the Broom Room on the Broom

I love all things Christmas and especially all the Christmas movies. Today I wanted to do a post sharing what Christmas movies we watch and where we watch them (as of 2023). Disney+ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Narnia is one of my favorite movies to watch after Halloween but before we officially start Christmas. It has the Santa section and feels wintery but isn't truly a Christmas movie. Miracle on 34th Street Miracle on 34th Street is such a classic and for good

I love doing holiday-themed activities with my kids and this year I decided to choose one Halloween-y topic to dive deeper into with my kids! I picked skeletons and we had a lot of fun with it. Books on Skeletons The core of our unit studies are always books. Here are the books we read together: Understanding Muscles and the Skeleton by Robert Snedden This book has a lot of information spanning the skeletal system. Because my kids are young, I didn't read all of this with th

One of my favorite traditions (that encompasses most of our other traditions) is our Book Advent. This is a tradition we have where the...

I have always love birthdays! My mom did a lot when I was growing up to make my birthday special each year and it's a joy as a mother to...