December 2025 Home Education Monthly Review

I better get this written before we’re any further into January! I hope these monthly home education diaries are useful to you. I hope that they can show that you can home educate without the need of a curriculum and that learning doesn’t have to be formal!

December was basically a build up Christmas, with various festive activities and a lot of baking. But that’s fine, we enjoy our little Christmas traditions of baking gingerbread, making mince pies and Christmas decorations.

Table of Contents

History

The kids have been enjoying their usual history podcasts, including Who, When, Wow and Greeking Out. Although we also tried a little bit of the Rest is History podcast too, which is good for older kids.

We visited Edinburgh castle for the Castle of Light show, which was interesting. Unfortuantely it didn’t tell us lots of interesting snippets of history as per previous years, but the lights were very pretty. It’s a great castle to visit and learn about, although our favourite has to be Stirling castle.

We visited Stirling Castle for a look around on a windy day in December. It’s easy for us to visit the local castles as we have Historic Scotland membership and can easily spend some time every week at a castle or other historic site. We’ve visited the castle many times over the years, so any visits now are mostly about repeating information they already know, meaning they now know a lot about the castle off by heart!

Whilst away on the Ardnamurchan peninsula over New Year we visited an abandoned village called Glendrian. This was not actually a clearance village, the village simply became unused when the nearby road didn’t go past the village and people moved away. You can still see many of the old cottages and bytes, including the 2 storey house which was the last one to be abandoned in 1941. Interesting to see how people lived in the past.

Geography

During our New Year break we visited the Ardnamurchan volcano, it’s very clear on google maps if you google ‘Sanna bay’. It was cool to see the formation of the ring of rocks forming the ancient crater and some of the rocks around the area. I did explain to the kids a little about how it was formed, but I’m not sure they were listening. I might look at this again another time, they already have a a very good understanding of volcanos and their formation from other volcanos we’ve seen.

I also spent time pointing out the islands we could see when staying at Ardnamurchan. Our cottage faced out towards, Eigg, Muck and Rum. Plus we could see Canna and Skye on the clear days too. I think it’s important to know where they are geographically, especially when we’ve visited several of those islands!

Of course we also have maps up around the house too, as I love maps so much. So the kids are always exposed to a variety of maps, even if they don’t necessarily know all the countries!

Science

The children have both been enjoying the new science podcast, The Rest Is Science. It’s aimed at adults, but the kids get a lot from it too. The hosts Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens make it quite interesting and not dry at all when talking about big science topics.

We’ve also listened to other science podcasts aimed at kids, including Wow in The World and Tumble. It’s surprising how much the kids learn from simply listening and engaging with podcasts!

Which brings us onto the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures. We’ve watched both last years lectures and this years, older lectures are also available on their website. This is the oldest science television programme. It goes back many years, to the 1960’s, and there are many years of lectures to watch on their site. This year was about space exploration and last year was about food and the body, which was really interesting!

The youngest is very interested in kitchen science projects again. So he’s been trying to do a few things by himself. I’ve just bought him a new big science kit for his birthday, so hopefully he will have plenty more science activities to do alone.

Of course we also discussed volcano’s a little whilst on holiday and had a good look at the night sky on clear nights too. The kids like to play in the dark at the beach, so we often go out in the dark over our new year holiday!

Maths

Both children have been working on Beast Academy to make sure they have good math foundations. It’s a paid programme, but we seem to go through phases of using it a lot and phases of not using it at all.

There was plenty of maths during baking sessions through December. From making mince pies, to gingerbread and cakes. December is a busy month for making and eating!

Both kids received Lego for Christmas. The eldest spent most of Christmas Day completing the Orient Express Lego set and working out how to motorise it. It doesn’t come with a motor, so it needed to be modified slightly!

We’ve played plenty of board games as a family as well as with friends. Various different games are good for maths, but it’s also a useful skill for logic too!

Language

Both children have a great love of stories, the eldest likes to read a lot, although he hasn’t currently got a series he’s reading. He sometimes takes time off from reading when he’s between a series/author. The youngest has been listening to many, many audiobooks as usual, including finishing the Northern Lights series by Phillip Pullman, Utterly Dark, The Line Husky and A Kind of Spark.

The 11 year old has also had lessons with a dyslexic tutor to improve his reading fluency. These are once a week and seem to be helping with his confidence. He can read texts fairly easily, although it’s just slow going. My hope is that this will help his fluency so he can read books quickly and easily.

Both children have also been working on their writing, mostly so I can make sure that it’s legible and they can write quickly when necessary. Neither chooses to write anything more than a couple of words through choice. So this is something I felt I had to push for them to work on. Some kids choose to practice writing when they see how well others write, but my two don’t seem to care! I’m not bothered about them writing essays, they can do that when they are ready and can easily learn how to when they need/want to.

Clubs and Groups

The usual clubs and groups have been on this month. With the kids attending dodgeball, Lego club, board games club and Scouts together. Although the eldest has now finished Scouts as he’s 14 1/2 years old, and had the traditional flouring.

The youngest has had gymnastics, drama, lead climbing, NYCOS choir, dancing and various muscial theatre/panto shows. There is certainly no end to the amount of time he’s busy with different clubs and groups.

Socialisation

As the youngest does so many groups he has plenty of time socialising. The eldest has fewer groups, through choice, but spends plenty of time with friends at park meets and visiting friends too.

I think we could easily get by with less socialisation, we’re always seeing people!

Art and Music

We visited the Botanics in Edinburgh for their Christmas lights. It was very wet, but it was still fun to see all the different light displays in time to the music!

The kids also made their friends some gifts by whittling wood. Making wands and gnome decorations. I need to try more whittling with them, they seem to enjoy it!

The youngest was also in the local panto, so he had a week of shows this month. We all went to watch one of them, and it was fantastic!

Physical Education

Everyday life for our kids tends to include a lot of physical movement. They are always running around with friends, cycling, playing games outside and of course various clubs and groups.

We’ve also been on plenty of walks, in the rain and the freezing weather. Ice is always a favourite when it’s cold weather, plus frozen beaches and snow on the beach! We’ve also just got stilts for the youngest’s Christmas, so he has been wandering up and down our street on those. Much to the amusement of passersby.