Celebrating Special Days to Increase Excitement in Homeschool

My children love homeschooling. However, since they began their school endeavors in public school, there are some aspects that they miss. One of the things that my children miss about public school is the special events such as wacky hair day and classroom parties. We started celebrating holidays by having our own parties and they enjoy this, but I want to take it up a notch. This year I want to celebrate some of those crazy holidays that get overlooked throughout the year. 

In the month of January, there are several notable days in history and wacky or special days that can be celebrated. While we can’t celebrate every single day, I wanted to give my children the option to choose some of these days to commemorate. To choose which days to commemorate, I gave my children the list below.

I do want to stress that there were more special days than these; however, I do not like to teach my children to judge others by their differences. National Nerd Day and National Peculiar Day are two such days that I removed from the lists for this reason. I want to teach tolerance to my children.

Once they were given the list, we chose the days that we would like to celebrate. We talked about each day and possible activities that we could do, and then we voted on each day.  At least two children had to vote for a day for us to place it in our calendar of events. Some days we weren’t excited about at all, whereas others received three votes. 

Our list of Special Days that we will be celebrating and activities that we will be doing are:

National Book Month – We are going to try to read 100 books during the month. This includes any type of book, such as comic books, picture books, chapter books, books of the Bible, and any genre. We will record them in a reading log. If we accomplish our goal, we will celebrate by having ice cream sundaes at the end of the month. This will require me to validate that they did read the book and didn’t just put it on the log.   

Pizza Week (Starts on the Sunday of the month) – My son wanted to order pizza every day, but that isn’t feasible. We thought about other ways that we could commemorate the week. Each day, Monday through Thursday, we are going to eat food that is pizza themed for lunch.  Pizza rolls, pizzadillas (quesadillas with pizza sauce and pepperoni), pizza dip, and veggie pizza. Friday night we will order a pizza or make our own pizza, which is our typical Friday night activity. 

4^th – Trivia Day – We are going to play a variety of trivia games such as Trivial Pursuit and Bible Trivia. We are also going to watch a couple of Jeopardy episodes that have previously aired. 

8^th – Bubble Bath Day – This one is self-explanatory. All three of them are going to get to take bubble baths. 

15^th – Strawberry Ice Cream Day – This is another self-explanatory day. We will be eating strawberry ice cream. 

19^th – National Popcorn Day – We are huge popcorn fans. We have every type of popcorn making device there is. We are going to make a small batch of popcorn from each method and vote to see which is best. We will make flavored popcorn such as caramel covered and chocolate drizzled with Oreo crumbles.

24^th – National Compliment Day & Clashing Clothes Day – We decided that since there were two special events on this day, we would complete both. For National Compliment Day, we have challenged ourselves to give 5 random strangers a compliment. We can compliment them on their outfits, their hair, or any other aspect about them. We are also going to dress in clashing colors and patterns. This will be an interesting combination. While we are complimenting someone on their outfit, they will be wondering if we have lost our minds with ours.

29^th – National Puzzle Day – The obvious choice would be to complete a jigsaw puzzle. During the winter months, we do this regularly. We thought we would complete word search puzzles, crossword puzzles, sudoku, and a variety of other puzzles.

My children are showing extreme excitement about these activities. They already want to plan for February. While it isn’t the perfect solution to them missing activities from public school, I hope that it helps. All other aspects of homeschooling are going well so I don’t want this minor issue to prevent them from loving the whole experience and to feel like they are missing out. 

Joanna Yates – I am a 36 year old mom of 3 beautiful children. My husband and I adopted our 3 children from foster care. We live in Kentucky, but live to vacation anywhere with a beach. I taught public school for 12 years before stopping to homeschool my children. I am a Christian.