5 Ways to Collect Christmas Credits

Many families enjoy theater and musical fine arts as a part of their yearly tradition. If you attend “A Christmas Carol,” watch “The Nutcracker,” or see “A Christmas Story” at the theater, they can be great additions to your course descriptions. Remember, a course description is just a description of what you did and a list of what you used in each class. Include field trips and hands-on experiences in your course descriptions, along with those holiday events. Each theater event could be included as a field trip in a Theater or Survey of Fine Art class. A sing-along event with “The Hallelujah Chorus,” focusing on the composer Handel, and practicing Christmas music during music lessons can be included in a course description for your Music, Voice, Piano, or Survey of Fine Art class. We spent the month of December listening to various Christmas classics, and learning the composer of significant works of music. Many young people will perform musically at church during the holidays. This can give you the opportunity to modify your course title slightly, and call it “Piano with Performance” demonstrating the additional skill of performing in a group.

Hand-made projects are more than just awesome gifts, they can also be artistic creations. Use arts and crafts time in your homeschool for gift making, and then include each project in your course descriptions. Often, a course description will provide an explanation of how you graded the class. For a fine art class, you might include a list of each hand-made project, and grade the final project with an “A” if it was completed to your satisfaction. Photography, and framing that photography, would make a wonderful gift as well as a school project. Sewing, knitting, crocheting, and other handcrafts can be included as well. You may have enough hours for a stand-alone class called Sewing, Handcrafts, Photography, or Visual Arts. Alternatively, those hours can be rolled into a class called Survey of Fine Art.

Some reading and writing may be included in your fine art class. When I was homeschooling, I gave my children Normal Rockwell’s Christmas Book to use for a writing prompt, and asked them to write a short story about any painting inside its pages. This way, writing could be used as part of their art credit, showing that the class included some compositions as well as projects and experiences. Attending a dramatized version of “A Christmas Carol” might be included as a theater study in an art survey or theater class. You could even have your child compare the theatrical performances to the story and discuss which version more closely reflects the original work.

Some teenagers will be fortunate to have a job during the holidays. Whether they are working full time for the theater or at Target, those hours can be collected into an Occupational Education course. While your child is working, estimate the number of hours spent on the job. Roughly 120-150 hours is equivalent to one full high school class, and about 60-90 hours is equivalent to a semester class worth half a credit. The work your child does can be either paid employment or community service. While your child is working, you may need to set other academics aside, but the hours still count for school. When they accumulate enough hours, call it a credit and put the class on your transcript. You can simply call it Occupational Education, or you can use a more specific title such as Occupational Education: Careers in Retail. Write a course description describing the job, tasks, and skills learned, and voila … your child has completed a Christmas credit!