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Christmas Cookie Unit Study

Traditions play an important role in crafting family units.

The little, often simple, things we do create the foundation for family memories. Traditions don’t have to be big and bold, ‘we spend ten days at Disney every March.’ They can be much simpler and smaller, small enough to hold in your hand. 

In our family, we love to have traditions and celebrations, especially at Christmas. While we try to keep our focus on Christ, we enjoy the fun festivities.

And in our family, Christmas would not be Christmas without cookies. We love baking and decorating cookies for friends and neighbors and our annual cousins’ Christmas cookie decorating party. 

There is something special about the smell of fresh-baked cookies and the messy memories made while we cut out different shapes or tried out a new recipe. This year we decided to do a Christmas cookie unity study with books, food, and even a little math!

Christmas Cookie Unit Study

The Gift of the Christmas Cookie

A couple of years ago, we found the book, The Gift of the Christmas Cookie.

The Gift of the Christmas Cookie: Sharing the Ture Meaning of Jesus’ Birth is a beautiful picture book. It was written by Dandi Daley Mackall and illustrated by Deborah Chabrian.  As you can probably guess by the subtitle, the book uses a story about a Christmas cookie to remind the reader of the true meaning of Christmas. The book tells the modern-day tale of a boy who learned how to share and give. Intertwined is a story about the origin of the Christmas cookie. 

I love that this book has a happy ending, but the author does not solve all the little boy’s problems. Without giving away too much of the story, I will say that the little boy and his mom are struggling a bit, but he learns how to give and share the true meaning of Christmas. Much like in real life, we can still have good days and joy even when we have problems. 

We found this an excellent book for the center of our study, but many other Christmas books include cookies and baking! You could read  Cranberry Christmas, Christmas Cookie Day, or Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Christmas book. 

Baking Christmas Cookies

Baking at Christmas time is a great way to have fun, bless others, make memories, and enjoy a tasty treat.  It’s also a way for even the very young to be a part of a family tradition. You could make your favorite cookie recipe together and enjoy them while reading the story. 

Alternately, you can read the story and then use the recipe in the back for baking cookies. You could use the story as a starting point for ideas for using the cookies to bless other people. You might give some to neighbors. You could use cookie cutters to cut them out into nativity shapes to help you tell the story of the birth of Christ.

Math and Science with Cookies

Depending on the age levels of your children, there are many ways to include math.

For the youngest children, have them help you count. They can count out the number of ingredients, the finished cookies, or how many cups of flour you use. 

Baking is always a great way to work on measurement skills for slightly older children through measuring out the ingredients. They can also learn about fractions through the various measurements and using the finished cookies. If you want to challenge them, find a recipe online and adjust the yield. Pick some random numbers and check out the fractions and decimals. You can also keep it simple and cut some of them into different fractions if you make circular cookies. 

If you are giving the cookies away, you can have your child help determine how many cookies you need for a certain amount of people, using multiplication.  Then they can divide them out evenly and package them.  Fun tip: add a few extras for breakage, or better yet, taste testing. 

Cookie math is not just for elementary students; older students can convert measurements from standard to metric. They can also do the math to determine how much dough you need for a certain amount of cookies. They could even determine the calorie count in each cookie but don’t tell me the results. I don’t want to hear about calories.

To bring in science, you can talk about different types of mixtures, experiment with changing ingredients, or even check out this fun Christmas cookie chemistry project. 

More Christmas Cookie Ideas

There are many fun ideas with Christmas cookies, such as watching a fun movie while eating your cookies.

If You Take a Mouse to the Movies is an excellent cookie-themed book option. 

You could invite friends over for a cookie swap, and everyone could bring a plate of their favorite cookies to share. This could be a just-for-fun event, or you could do a graphing activity to determine the favorite cookie. 

You could add some art by doing a cookie-themed picture or breaking out the icing and sprinkles to decorate your cookies. Baking different cookies from around the world would be a great way to add in geography. You could do an additional cookie each day and study the country of origin, the peoples, and their cultural traditions around each cookie.

There are endless options for creativity with Christmas cookies!

Implementing The Christmas Cookie Study

The great thing about a Christmas cookie study, other than being delicious, is that you can make it work for your homeschool. You could take one day in December and devote it to cookies. You could bake, read, and watch a movie all in one day. 

If you wanted to give it more time, you could enjoy it for a whole week. Try out different recipes, research the countries of origin, and read a new book each day. Some families might choose to make it the focus of each Friday in December to change things up. Make it work for you and remember to have fun, and do not worry about perfection. 

If you need some help coming up with recipes, you can check out a few of our family favorites.

Recommended Christmas Cookie Books

Do you have a favorite Christmas tradition with your kids?

Share it in the comments below.

Dawn is a passionate follower of Jesus, wife to Chris, and homeschool mom of four. In her spare time she loves to read, hike, and write on her blog Schoolin’ Swag. She enjoys reviewing curriculum and helping moms find the right fit for their family. Some of her favorite parts of homeschooling are hymn studies, living history, and read alouds. She and her children also enjoy incorporating food into their studies as often as possible.

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Simple Christmas Learning Ideas That Become Traditions

As homeschool parents, we are presented with the opportunity to retreat from the hustle and bustle of the season and instead, immerse our families into the anticipation of and focus on the Savior’s birth.

Christmas traditions don’t have to be elaborate. In fact, over the years one of the most precious Christmas traditions has simply become learning.

Throughout the years we have explored different cultures and holiday customs, enjoyed Christmas unit studies and participated in Advent preparations. Breaking away from our regular curriculum and embracing the joy the Christmas season brings has allowed us to capture traditions within our home.

Put away the “formal” learning this season, and focus on a few simple activities that will build traditions and strengthen your children’s faith and family bonds. The benefits of this will be beyond measure.

Simple Learning Ideas to Build Family Traditions

Here are some ways that we have built a tradition of learning in our home during the holiday season. You can return to each year, no matter old your children are.

December then becomes a time of anticipation and learning!

Christmas Reading

Some of my favorite moments are those spent curled up with hot cocoa and reading beautiful holiday and seasonal books. You can find recommendations of some selections we are reading this year here (video link).

Reading is always an excellent way to learn. It provides opportunities for learning
about other cultures, social and emotional growth, and most importantly - strengthening the bond as a family.

A simple Christmas book basket placed in the living room can provide hours and hours of learning - and when your children are older (even adults!) they will still love it when the Christmas book basket makes an appearance!

Resources for holiday reading:

Simply sitting down and READING is a gift during an otherwise busy time.

Simple Christmas Learning Ideas to Build Traditions

Christmas Crafting

Holiday crafts are endless! Whether you are looking for something simple like a premade painting kit from Hobby Lobby or making salt dough ornaments as keepsakes and family gifts - Pinterest and Google will provide endless ideas!

Admittedly I’m not a “craft mom.” It makes me nervous to have glitter and glue everywhere. But there is something about breaking away from the “normal” during this season that gives me the ability to endure it.

We had fun making ornaments from dehydrated oranges for our Christmas tree last year.

A few SIMPLE ideas for crafting/art this holiday season:

Holiday Themed Unit Studies

Have you have seen all the beautiful Christmas-themed unit studies floating around? Honestly, it can be overwhelming if you do a simple internet search. Here are a few of my favorite Christmas studies:

Simple Learning Ideas to Build Holiday Traditions

Advent and Scripture Readings

One of my favorite yearly traditions is our Advent and scripture reading. This is THE MOST simple and meaningful gift you can give your children.

Every year we read a chapter of Luke each day leading up to Christmas. By
Christmas Eve, we have read about the life and ministry of Jesus. You would think after a couple of years, doing the same thing would become tiring, but there is always a new realization or conversation that comes out of reading through these scriptures.

We typically combine that with a nightly advent reading. Last year we read through the advent story, Jotham’s Journey. This year we will be reading through Tabitha’s Travels.

Simple Ideas for Creating Traditions Through Learning This Christmas

Serving Others During Christmas

This time of year we are given a wonderful opportunity to follow our Savior
as an example for serving others.

He came to serve rather than be served. ~ Matthew 20:28

It can be easy for our children to fall into the trap of “wanting” rather than selflessly giving and serving others. And, in an increasingly materialistic world, we need to equip our children to THINK OF OTHERS FIRST.

  • Bake cookies for first responders

  • Pack Operation Christmas Child boxes

  • Serve the homeless in your area with local relief organizations

  • Choose an angel off the Angel Tree to purchase Christmas for as a family

As homeschool parents, we are presented with the opportunity to retreat from the hustle and bustle of the season and instead, immerse our families in the anticipation of and focus on our Savior’s birth.

Taking time to slow down (a HUGE benefit of homeschooling our children!) allows us to capture the joy this season brings, and what a gift that is for our family.

I am so grateful for this precious opportunity - and THAT is why learning has truly become one of my favorite Christmas traditions.

Do you have a favorite learning activity/tradition in your home?

Share it with me in the comments below!

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This post is from Homegrown Learners’ contributor, Megan.

Megan is a homeschool mom of 6, wife to Jon, former public school teacher, and follower of Christ. Homeschooling and homemaking are areas that the Lord has drawn her to be passionate about and it is her desire to be as intentional as she can in both.

She enjoys cooking, reading, gardening, history, and hiking in the beautiful mountains of East Tennessee. In her spare time, she is also a content creator for her YouTube channels Pennies and Salt , as well as her website, Pennies and Salt.

Simple Learning Ideas To Build Family Traditions