Ramblings...

I mentioned a few times here that we do SpiralScouts at home, I’ve even discussed starting a Circle *we currently have a Hearth due to it just being our family taking part*. We have various badges we are working towards, but the main ones are part of the Wheel Of The Year series, which requires learning about the Pagan Sabbats.

I wasn’t 100% sure as to how to tackle teaching the boys the Sabbats, and so I went searching online for things to help teach them. I came across a few books online through Amazon, but they were clearly for parents who were Pagan/Wiccan and raising their children as such. Which doesn’t work for us, so I formulated a plan. I knew what I wanted, I knew what I wanted to get out of it, so I just went ahead and made it myself.

The Waldorf Homeschooling Method mentions “Main Lesson or Good Books”, but these are something to be made by the child as a way to keep track of their work. The “books” I made could be seen as similar since they will hold work the kids will do *or have done*, but they already hold the knowledge I want them to learn *hence the name Knowledge Books*, and they were made by me, not the boys. If we update them *which depends on them being affective first off* then I’ll probably let the boys take over in the creating department.

I set off making the first Wheel of the Year book, and as I was doing it, it hit me that I could do the same thing with our winter holidays as well. This would allow for all the information to be in one spot, and the boys will have something lightweight, full of info, and readily available as we work through the December holidays. So after I got through the knowledge books for the Wheel of the Year, I tackled the winter holidays.

I’m really considering making other ones for the other holidays that take place throughout the year, possibly one that focuses on patriotic holidays *The 4th, Flag Day, Memorial Day, and Veteran’s Day*, then one for the other holidays that are scattered throughout the year. Put I’ll see how this work for us. So you want to see what they look like? Ok here you go!


Each “book” is made out of a 3-pronged folder in the boys’ favorite colors. All images were acquired though a simple search of online images. I would just plug in what I was looking for “Wheel of the Year”, “Santa Claus”, etc., and then scan through the results until I found images that I liked.

Wheel Of The Year Knowledge Books



Winter Holidays Knowledge Books

On the inside of each book are markers so we can easily find the holiday we are covering.


They will most likely be temporary since they are just post-it markers and aren’t built for a lot of pulling, over even general wear and tear. Not sure just yet what I will use on the ends as tabs, any ideas are welcomed though!


For each holiday there is an image that ties into the holiday glued onto cardstock, and then on the back of the cardstock I glued a little write-up of the history for each holiday. I found the histories doing a basic search, the Pagan Sabbats info came from Proud To Be Pagan, and the Christmas info in particular came from the History Channel website *LOVE that channel and their website*.


The images for the Sabbats books were found online, they were images from a calendar dating back to around 2007. They were perfect for the book and I’m so glad I found them.


On the inside of the Sabbats books I placed another Wheel of the Year image since it mentions the various names that the Sabbats go by.


I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out, the next goal for these "books" is to fill them with activities the boys can do to further their knowledge. The “books” took a couple of weeks to finish, due to running out of some supplies *the sheet protectors, card stock, and glue sticks*, as well as having a mile long list of other things I needed to accomplish at the same time. But, all in all the project was fairly easy.


Curious as to where I’ll be getting some of the things I will be filling these “books” with?


Well there is Pooka Pages, which I used to discuss Mabon back in September. There is tons of stuff there that is all kid based and makes learning about the Sabbats fun. Proud To Be Pagan KIDS has some fun useful stuff like recipes, which we will probably do and then add pictures of our creations to our “books” along with the recipes for future reference.

As for the winter holidays, I’ll probably use Enchanted Learning printouts, the library, and various things (printouts, activities, recipes, crafts, books, etc.) I’ve collected over the past few years since discussing winter holidays is a yearly thing in our home. The only holiday that has me stumped is HumanLight. It is fairly new, but it is a Humanist holiday and more inline with our family’s beliefs and practices. So I wanted to teach the boys about it, and potentially have it be a holiday we actively take part in. But finding things to go with it is proving difficult. I guess I’ll just have to be a bit creative on that one.


So for more information you can checkout the following sites:

Pooka Pages

Proud To Be Pagan, and for the KIDS

History Of Christmas

History of Hanukkah

Kwanzaa Official Website

Humanlight Official Website

Copyright(c)2010 Rayven Holmes