Making Christmas Fun a Part of School
How is your calendar looking for December? Are you overwhelmed yet? Maybe this will help!
As my family knows, I love Christmas. I have a December birthday and our daughter Bethany sent me a sweet gift package for her “Christmas-loving, history-loving, history-of-Christmas loving Ma.” I was thrilled.
Fun opportunities are all around us at Christmastime, but sometimes a homeschooling mama is so busy “doing school” that she doesn’t think she has time for the fun stuff.
Sometimes she tries to fit in school plus those other things. That tempts everyone to be exhausted and cranky and anything but jolly merrymakers experiencing peace on earth.
So what’s a mama to do? In Deuteronomy chapters 6 and 11, Moses told the Israelites how God wanted them to teach their children–at home and on the road and when they went to bed and when they got up in the morning. Hmm… What did God not say here?
He did not say, “Be sure you do school for x hours a day and then do soccer practice and ballet lessons and church activities and concerts and playground days and youth group and family devotionals after that!”
Lots and lots of those fun Christmas activities you can do this time of year are actually learning activities, too. You know what? The drive to a Christmas concert and the concert itself and the drive home could actually count for school.
Families have limited amounts of time and energy and stamina. I would hate to miss a Christmas concert or ice skating in the park or going Christmas caroling because I was too busy doing school, especially when, in my opinion, those things are school.
You shall therefore impress these words of mine
on your heart and on your soul;
and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand,
and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.
You shall teach them to your sons,
talking of them when you sit in your house
and when you walk along the road
and when you lie down and when you rise up.
Deuteronomy 11:18-19