Enjoy a simple, joyful and stress-free Christmas event for the whole family. With art, nature and music plus a nature craft for your Christmas homeschool, you can make memories and have fun together.
Though we would like to, as homeschool moms, we can’t fit in all the holiday homeschooling fun. This Christmas homeschool event, however, gives you an easy way to say yes! And all you need is just a bit of time set aside and a few inexpensive supplies.
It’s all done for you! Sit back and enjoy the fun!
A Christmas Tree for the Animals – An Event for the Whole Family!
Sign up to receive the replay
Activities included in this Joyful Art, Nature and Music for Your Christmas Homeschool Event
Access to attend live and to the replay of the event – relax and enjoy on your schedule
How to create and decorate an outdoor Christmas tree for the animals with Amy of Homeschool Nature Study
A Christmas craft! Make an ornament for your outdoor tree (edible for the animals) with Victoria of Homeschool Nature Study
A hands on art lesson with Nana of You ARE an ARTiST – with a FUN Christmas tree with the animals theme!
A downloadable nature study, hymn study AND composer study to accompany the live event!
construction paper (Nana suggests white construction paper for this lesson)
baby wipes or damp paper towel for easy clean up
Craft supplies detailed at sign up.
Share On Social Media!
Be sure to share photos of your Christmas Tree With the Animals Art, Nature and Music time on social media and tag @outdoorhourchallenge and @chalkpastelart – We can’t wait to see you participating and to see your paintings!
And please invite your friends! Share this post with them!
Art, Nature, Hymns & More Membership Bundle
TWO homeschool memberships at a discount price! Add the beauty of art lessons AND nature study to your homeschool with this family-style bundle!
Self-paced and live art lessons AND nature studies
Online membership calendars for both – enjoy a daily art lesson prompt AND a daily nature study prompt
Downloadable and printable guides and resources
Oh so many bonuses!
The Your Best Homeschool Ultimate Membership
You will have the resources to make beautiful memories with your children. Just open and go! It’s JOY!
Growing a love of art at You ARE an ARTiST is a multi-generational passion! Tricia is Nana’s daughter and a mama of five children. Nana shared her first chalk pastel art lessons with her grandchildren around Tricia’s kitchen table. Homeschooling since 2000, Tricia has seen the fruits of home education with three homeschool grads so far!She shares the art and heart of homeschooling at Your Best Homeschool and is author of the book, Help! I’m Homeschooling! She and her husband, Steve, are also owners of sister sites Homeschool Nature Study and The Curriculum Choice.
Spring and summer are the perfect time to explore a pond nature study! Exploring a local pond can be filled with surprises and wonder, from algae and tadpoles to birds and fish. The educational opportunities are endless. Then, you can come back inside to cool off with the fun and colorful chalk pastel pond lessons!
The Abundant Life In A Pond
Ponds are a perfect place to learn about various things. A pond’s ecosystem is chocked full of life cycles of plants and animals. Birds and insects fill the air while fish and frogs fill the water. Even little kids enjoy catching tadpoles while older children may learn about water ph!
Observing a pond can also be a wonderful sensory experience. Water, mud, and grass are all along a pond, and the sights can be exciting and soothing. Watching a butterfly flit back and forth is calming, while the minnows zipping to and fro is exhilarating. How about watching a turtle lumber up onto a slippery log?
I highly suggest visiting your local pond and letting your children see what they can see! Are those wildflowers across the way?
This Pond Nature Study Is Perfect For Kids
After an eventful day at the pond, why not come inside and cool down with some of Nana’s pond video art lessons? The benefits of learning in a hands-on and multi-sensory way are vast. Children absorb more information and retain more of what they’ve learned when you incorporate hands-on opportunities, including art!
All you’ll need is a pack of construction paper, a starter set of chalk pastels, and Nana’s pond video art lessons!
New Frog Life Cycle lesson (For You ARE an ARTiST Clubhouse members)
The Lily Pads are in a Simple Start with Chalk Pastels series in Clubhouse membership!
Frog Life Cycle Activity
Nana has a NEW Frog Life Cycle art lesson! A pond nature study wouldn’t be complete without studying the frog life cycle. While raising tadpoles is the most fun, drawing the life cycle is just as educational, and it helps solidify the knowledge my kiddos have acquired. Nana will show your child how frogs start as jelly-like eggs and then go through a metamorphosis where tadpoles slowly start to grow legs and then begin to develop the pulmonary respiration system that allows breath!
Be sure to check out these other posts, such as Backyard Biology: Frogs for Kids, where we raised our tadpoles and learned about the frog life cycle up close and personal! Tricia and her family did too!
More Pond Nature Study Resources For Your Homeschool
Don’t forget there is a frog life cycle printable in the Homeschool Nature Study membership that includes notebooking pages, a full nature study and more.
With the You ARE An Artist Clubhouse membership, you’ll have access to the pond nature video art lessons plus 700+ other lessons, including these other nature-themed lessons:
honey bees on sunflower
bunny
ladybug
caterpillar
lily pad
snail
forest path
red-eyed tree frog
eagle’s nest with eagle family
rat snake
deer in the forest
bear
dandelion
green anole
ant
chipmunk
lightning bug (or firefly)
cardinal
goldfinch
hummingbird
chickadee
robin
bluebird
Plus so much more!
This summer, don’t miss out on a pond nature study, including the art of chalk pastels!
Erin is a writer, blogger, and homeschooler to two intense kids. Her blog is filled with information to help you explore a child led education while making meaningful connections with your children. Discover favorite read alouds, seasonal books, games, art projects, hands-on activities, and learn to just breathe through the ups and downs of life. She loves nature, farm life, good books, knitting, new pens, and hot coffee. Erin is a contributing writer for Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Her work has also been featured on Simple Homeschool and Book Shark.
Do you incorporate nature study into your homeschool? What about art and music appreciation? Learning art and music history is very important, as is learning about the world right outside our door. Now you can quickly and seamlessly include the beauty of art, music, and nature in your homeschool.
The Value Of Art, Music and Nature In Your Homeschool
I admit I’ve been lacking when it comes to fine arts and music in our homeschool. Sure my kids knew who Picasso and Monet were, but if you asked them about Giotto or Bruegel, they would have given you a blank stare. The same goes for music appreciation. My kids knew of Beethoven and Mozart but had no clue who Vivaldi, Corelli, or Handel was.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg, folks. Please don’t take my homeschool mom card away!
How could I possibly have time to incorporate these AND nature studies into an already full homeschool schedule?
It was pretty easy!
You ARE An Artist has created an Art and Music Appreciation study called Homeschool Fine Arts! And now they have a new site called the Homeschool Nature Study! They have interwoven these incredible resources so that they complement each other and only take 45 minutes to an hour per week.
I decided to take our love of Nana’s chalk pastels we usually do on Fridays and name it Fine Arts Friday with some nature study thrown in too!
You ARE an ARTiST’s art and music appreciation program is designed for busy homeschooling families. The art & music appreciation plans organize a variety of resources so you can open the schedule and, with little preparation, offer your children experiences with great artists and composers!
By creating a habit of viewing paintings each week and listening to carefully curated music, my children are getting to know various artists and composers within a particular period. We’ve already had a ton of fun observing works such as:
Flight into Egypt
Life of St. Francis Renunciation to Wealth
The Dream of Joachim
Lamentation of Christ
You ARE An Artist Fine Arts Appreciation plans are listed by grade, but you can also use them family-style! There is so much flexibility with this program. Use it, however, works best for your family.
The new Nature Study Membership works seamlessly with the art and music appreciation. There are over 20 Nature Courses to take AND a remarkable Nature Study with Art and Music Appreciation for all Seasons!
Homeschool Lessons For Art, Music And Nature Studies
Homeschool Fine Arts Curriculum by Grade
Each fine arts curriculum offers additional art appreciation books, music, and podcasts that you can use as you have time available. They also encourage you to incorporate hands-on famous artists’ art lessons with Nana. These plans pull together affordably priced materials along with internet links so you can have a reasonably priced art and music appreciation program. There are 32-36 weeks planned at each level, and this allows your family plenty of flexibility to complete the curriculum in one homeschool year.
If you don’t feel that a full year of fine arts appreciation is for you, you can also choose from a collection of unique art and music appreciation unit studies which typically last 6-9 weeks.
Homeschool Nature Study and Outdoor Hour Challenge
The Homeschool Nature Study Membership encourages you to get outdoors with the #outdoorhourchallenge. It also uses the Handbook of Nature Study to help bring life to your nature studies. With the Nature Study Membership, you’ll be enrolled in ALL of the nature study courses, including:
Autumn
Birds
Creepy Things
Forest Fun
Garden
Getting Started
Herbs
High Desert
Insects
Mammals
Moss, Fungi, and Lichen
Nature Crafts
Nature Journaling
Nature Study with Art and Music Appreciation – All Seasons of Curriculum
Planning Resources
Pond
Rocks
Seashore
Spring
Summer
The Outdoor Mom
Trees
Weather
Wildflowers
Winter
Winter Wednesdays
There is even a handy calendar with daily prompts so you can choose what bite-size chunks of nature works best for you and your family. The nature calendar provided us with YouTube videos, photos, and notebooking pages for each day of the month!
How To Incorporate Art, Music And Nature Into Your Homeschool Routine
Art and Music Appreciation
With our Art and Music Appreciation, my kids are learning the basics of drawing with the Draw Squad. We are learning about different famous artist and their artwork each week, and that has been quite entertaining. Don’t think that art appreciation must be serious and dry, especially when you’ve got kids.
At least my kids like to find the exciting and weird subject matter in each piece. Like clouds that look like UFOs or floating heads or faces that look like they have indigestion. Oh, yes, it’s true. But by pointing out some of these funny and unique bits of each artwork, my kids remember the artist, the time period, and the artwork themselves.
Why yes, the Madonna and Child, by Berlinghiero, does have alien qualities!
For Music Appreciation, we’ve been learning and listening to Vivaldi:
Spring (Four Seasons)
Summer (Four Seasons)
Concerto for Two Trumpets
Sovente il Sole
Concerto in D for Piano and Guitar
Our favorite piece so far is his Four Seasons. My son said the Summer was quite “morose.” We did Nana’s Vivaldi Spring Tree chalk pastel and have added Vivaldi to our notebook timeline.
Nature Study
Nature study has contained more about Vivaldi and a composer notebooking page! He goes beautifully with any season really. We’ve studied snowflakes, winter birds, winter mammals, the winter night sky, and most recently, bulbs because our daffodils are in full bloom, and our tulips are emerging!
My children have become acquainted with winter nature study, Vivaldi, Corelli, and Giotto within a few short months! Our Fine Arts Friday has become a fun and hands-on way of learning about great art and exciting time periods. Afterward, we head outside for our nature study and #outdoorhourchallenge. Fridays have become a rich, full day of beauty and learning like never before! Won’t you join us?
Erin is a writer, blogger, and homeschooler to two intense kids. Her blog is filled with information to help you explore a child led education while making meaningful connections with your children. Discover favorite read alouds, seasonal books, games, art projects, hands-on activities, and learn to just breathe through the ups and downs of life. She loves nature, farm life, good books, knitting, new pens, and hot coffee. Erin is a contributing writer for Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Her work has also been featured on Simple Homeschool and Book Shark.
