BJU Press Blog

homeschool Christmas

Twelve Days of Christmas Writing Activity

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Christmas writing activity
If you enjoyed the Twelve Days of Thanksgiving activity Rebecca posted, you may also enjoy this Christmas writing activity! Encourage your children to keep a journal entitled “Twelve Days of Christmas Meditations.” The idea is for them to write about a different topic each day, reflecting on God’s goodness in all the different gifts He has given us. Ultimately, these reflections should lead them to our most precious gift, His Son who laid down His life for us. Feel free to use these topic suggestions or come up with your own; the possibilities are endless! You can even use this printable visual as a writing prompt for each day.

“On the twelfth day of Christmas, my Lord God gave to me . . . ”

One Only Begotten Son

What better way to start this journal than by thanking God for His unspeakable gift, our Lord Jesus Christ? Find some prophecies about Him in the Old Testament and how they were fulfilled in the New Testament.

Two Testaments

We can also praise God for giving us His complete and perfect Word. Explain how Jesus is the central theme in both the Old and New Testaments.

Three Talents

God has graciously given us different skills and abilities. Choose three talents the Lord has blessed you with, and write how you can use them for His glory.

Four Glad Seasons

Write about your favorite aspects of each season of the year and how each one points us to our Creator.

Five Bible Servants

List your choices for the top five individuals in Scripture, and explain why they are your favorites.

Six Precious Verses

Write out six Bible verses that have special meaning to you. If you just can’t limit yourself to six, feel free to list more!

Seven Special Creatures

Praise the Lord today for seven of His most unique mammals, insects, birds, fish, reptiles, or amphibians—any creature you find amazing or interesting. Again, you don’t have to choose just seven!

Eight Promises Given

Write down eight of God’s precious promises given to us in His Word.

Nine Faithful Heroes

Make a list of nine people who have made an impact for Christ and on your life as well. Write a short explanation of why you included each one. They can be missionaries, evangelists, pastors, or anyone else who has affected your life either in the past or in the present.

Ten Fingers and Toes

Psalm 139:14 says, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well.” Spend some time in your journal today praising God for how He created your body and reflect on how you can use it to serve and glorify Him.

Eleven Carols Ringing

So many carols, so little time! Write down eleven Christmas carols you enjoy singing at this time of year; see if you can find some “new” old ones you’ve never heard before and try to learn them with your family.

Twelve Favorite Things

God has so richly blessed us with all kinds of things! List a dozen of your favorites, and spend some time thanking the Lord for them. Examples include a favorite toy, book, stuffed animal, souvenir, food, article of clothing, and so on.

As your children work on their journals, encourage them to think of ways they can give back to their good and gracious Giver.

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Jennifer is a pastor’s wife and mom of two young girls and loves homeschooling them. During her own twelve years of being homeschooled, Jennifer developed a passion for reading and writing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and relishes writing during her free time.

Teaching Your Kids to Make Christmas Gift Budgets

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setting Christmas gift budgets
Christmastime can be overwhelming not just for adults but for children too. “You want this! You need this!” scream the ads on TV, on the radio, at the mall, in the mail—and it’s all designed to incite greed and the desire for more. Sure, we love to see those happy smiles when our kids get something precious they’ve longed to own, but Christmas is primarily about the blessing of giving. By teaching your kids how to develop their own Christmas gift budgets, you’re reinforcing that focus on giving and encouraging financial responsibility at the same time.

Making a List

Sit down with your kids and create a Christmas list together, not of things they want to receive, but of people they love—close family members, other relatives, neighbors, teammates, and friends. For some of the people on the Christmas list, each child will want to make or purchase a separate, special gift. For others, the gift could be a joint one from your whole family. You could have your kids color code those who will receive individual gifts and those who will get a joint gift.

Setting a Total Amount for the Gift Budgets

Whether your children are planning on buying the Christmas gifts or making them, they’ll need a budget. Explain that even a handmade gift costs something in time, effort, and supplies. Since your kids may be new to this concept, suggest a total budget amount for each child. This amount could be money they earn or money that you give them to spend.

Dividing Up the Funds

Here’s where the math comes in! Ask each child to divide the total amount of his or her budget by the number of people on the Christmas list. The result is the per-person Christmas budget. You could also suggest that your kids spend a little more on the people closest to them and a little less on others. Younger kids need help with this part, but the older children can figure out the math on their own.

Making the Purchases

As your children are shopping for gifts or supplies, they’ll probably be tempted to overspend or to buy something for themselves. Encourage them to stay focused, stick to their per-person amount, and look for items of decent quality. It’s all about planning ahead and resisting the impulse buy, yet still finding or creating something that shows love.

Are you ready to refocus your children on giving rather than getting? You’ve got two months before Christmas—plenty of time to help them work on a budget, make some gifts, shop strategically, and enjoy the sweet spirit that comes with thinking more about others and less about self. After all, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and the mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.

A Hope-Filled Christmas

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Christmas ornament
Despite the festive, signature red and green of the Christmas season, I was blue—navy blue from head to toe.

It was my first Christmas as a newlywed and my first Christmas away from home.

It wasn’t that we were spending the holiday completely apart from loved ones. My husband’s family was driving eleven hours so that we could all be together. But it simply wasn’t my family. Life was just too expensive for us to travel coast-to-coast to spend the holiday at my folks’ house. So there would be no late-night wrapping marathon with my mom, no curling up with my siblings while Dad read Christmas stories, and no helping the little ones open their gifts and play with new toys.

How could I celebrate without them?

I never expected to ask myself that question. My family always focused on Jesus as “the reason for the season,” manger scenes figured prominently in our Christmas décor, and we read the account of Christ’s birth every year. But here I was feeling like it just wouldn’t be Christmas without my family.

Why was I celebrating Christmas?

In our fast-paced, materialistic society, the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season is the one time generally set apart for family gatherings. But if Christmas means spending time with family, how can our hearts be merry when the ones that make the season special are so far away?

The first Christmas was also spent with families scattered far and wide—for a census. How vulnerable Mary and Joseph must have felt, so very near the baby’s time of birth but packed nonetheless into a strange city overflowing with people. Squeezed into a stable with the animals of wealthier citizens, the young couple faced Mary’s labor and delivery alone, without the help of mothers or nearby neighbor women.

The Son of God faced a different kind of separation in leaving heaven and His Father’s side to come into the world as one of His frail creatures. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) was the cry that rent the heavens some thirty-three years after the night of the angels’ rejoicing outside Bethlehem. Pressed down by the weight of the world’s sins, Jesus Christ experienced the full agony of the separation from God that we deserved.

So why do we celebrate Christmas?

But the story doesn’t end with the separation of the crucifixion. We celebrate Christmas because the Son of God rose from that grave as our conquering Savior. The unbelief and derision from many of those Jesus came to save couldn’t diminish the hope inherent in His coming. The angel had told Joseph, “Thou shalt call His name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus doesn’t just offer hope to every hurting heart; He Himself is the hope people desperately seek. And Christmas is the season of hope because it commemorates the beginning of Christ’s work to reconcile us with God.

So how can we celebrate Christmas when our hearts are weighed down, either by grief over absent loved ones or simply by the stresses of life? We do it by finding joy in one, unchangeable truth—that God gave us Himself that first Christmas. He experienced our separation for us: “He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. . . . He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4–5).

The ache of my first Christmas holiday away from my family still lingers these many years later, but because of Christ, I can always have hope. Because of Christ, those who love Him will spend eternity together. And because of Christ, Home is waiting—the Home and family we’ll never be separated from again.