ABC’s of Homeschooling ~ Holidays & Imagination

Yes, I have holidays on the brain! (Who doesn’t??)

It seems like Thanksgiving was only a couple of days ago and Christmas is only a few days away! Check out our Thankful Tree on our school bulletin board. Over the next couple of days we’ll be re-doing it for Christmas and Advent.

We’re a week into Advent now, (a month long intentional celebration of the coming of Christ, first as a babe, and soon to return again.) Of course, holidays aren’t homeschool specific. Everyone celebrates holidays. But there are some ways that holidays creep into our lessons and influence our current school work, right?

There are crafts, activities, history, literature, unit studies… any and all of these may show an appearance for any given holiday. I’m planning on finishing a lapbook on the history of Christmas that we started working on last year – better late than never, right?Currclick.com is one of the many places I turn to for holiday activities, as well as a number of freebie printable sites. I also have several holiday books for reference.

So there’s lots of holiday stuff going on around here. And lots of imagination flowing, too. My kids are FULL of it. I may be a bit biased.. but I think my kids have huge imaginations — especially my son. His imagination is a big as the sky. He has turned cardboard soda boxes into a suit of armor and he makes pipe cleaners into little people. He likes to make “inventions” and do “experiments” and dream up all manner of exciting adventures. But he’s not the only one. The girls are pretty good at it, too. They dress up and pretend many varieties of scenarios and storylines. My oldest one can take a plain piece of fabric and twist and tie it into any costume she desires. And sometimes it drives me crazy because they’re supposed to be doing chores or school but I find them playing in their room all dressed up on a make believe adventure. But mostly I don’t because I really love that they use their imaginations the way they do. I’ve always kept dress up buckets full of costumes, fabric pieces and accessories to encourage that.

I try to find other ways to encourage their imaginations, too. Legos, construction sets, art supplies. I think a healthy imagination is important, don’t you?

So how do you help your children on their imaginative quests? And how do you incorporate holiday activities into your homeschool day?

This post is a part of the ABC’s of Homeschooling by Dawn @ The Momma Knows. You can read all of my ABC posts here.