Weird January Holidays You Can Have Fun Celebrating
These fun and weird January holidays will give your tweens something to look forward to during the dark days of winter.
The weeks can get awfully long when there’s nothing special going on. Luckily, there are a ton of wacky, special days you can observe.
To be honest, your tweens and teens may have more fun celebrating these off the wall holidays than the bigger ones.
Virtually every single day of the year is some kind of theme day or unique holiday, and while they might not hold as much meaning or significance as Halloween or Christmas, they can be a great way to shake up your routine.
To make things easy, I’ve chosen a few interesting ones for you and your kids to observe this first month of the year and shared ideas of things you can do together.
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Weird January Holidays
January marks the end of the festive holiday season and the start of the new year. After the flurry of activities that accompany Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, it can feel strangely quiet when things finally settle down and you aren’t trying to navigate an endless holiday to-do list.
After you’ve taken down the tree and put away your decorations… what comes next?
If you’d like to infuse a little more holiday joy and merriment into your year, while having a ton of fun with your kids, add some less-traditional theme days and wacky holidays to your schedule.
January is filled with lots of fun holidays to choose from. Here are just a few to get you started.
Trivia Day
Do you consider yourself a whiz with miscellaneous facts? What about your kids? Whether you’re a fan of hoarding random knowledge for your next pop quiz or you don’t consider yourself too much of a buff, you can have a great time celebrating National Trivia Day on January 4th.
Here are some ideas you can use to have some fun with your tweens on the day honoring facts, both small and large.
- Make a trivia game that’s all about your family by creating a personalized Jeopardy game. You can incorporate questions about your family, town, vacations you’ve taken, pets, virtually anything that’s meaningful to you. Then grab some snacks and gather everyone together to play. Involve your tweens and teens even more by encouraging them to build the game.
- Learn some new facts. Ask your middle schoolers to search online for ten new things to share with the family over dinner. They could go a step further and use what they found to make a game for everyone to compete against each other. You could easily give them a topic to research that relates to something they’re studying in school.
- Incorporate this Liberty Bell Timeline Trivia Scavenger Hunt into your day. If your tween is studying American history, this activity would be a great choice for a day honoring facts and knowledge.
- Incorporate trivia into a family game night with a board game where players have to answer random questions. Choose a standard Family Trivial Pursuit game or one that caters to older kids’ interests, like Friends or Harry Potter.
National Cheese Lover’s Day
If your middle schooler loves cheese (and who doesn’t?!) you won’t want to miss the chance to celebrate National Cheese Lover’s Day on January 20th.
Indulge in this delicious treat and learn more about it with these fun activities.
- Theming your geography lesson around cheese by exploring countries and regions through food is a great way to make the subject exciting for tweens. Focus on a country that’s known for this dairy staple, like France, Italy, or Switzerland, and have your kids do some research to understand what varieties they make there and why.
- Learn how cheese is made. If you live near a dairy, see if you can schedule a field trip to learn more about the process of transforming milk into cheese. If not, you can always take a virtual tour online from the comfort of your home. When you’re done, get your tweens into the kitchen to try their hand at making some themselves.
- Of course, what’s a better way to celebrate the day than to eat some cheese? Have your kids help you make up a board filled with cheeses from different regions. Melt a pot of fondue and serve up some small bites to dip before dinner. Or make your own pizzas to observe the special day.
National Puzzle Day
Does your family love solving puzzles? If so, you’re in luck because January 29 is Puzzle Day. It’s a day to celebrate logic games of all kinds – jigsaw, crosswords, word searches, Sudoku, and more.
Use these ideas to have some fun celebrating this unique holiday.
- Create some personalized puzzles for your middle schoolers to solve, or even better, let them create one for you to complete. There are lots of free online crossword puzzle and word search generators that you can use.
- Plan a family puzzle night. Challenge the family to complete a large jigsaw puzzle together, like this 1000 piece Maleficent one, or make it a competition by getting personal puzzles and see who can put theirs together the fastest.
- Get crafty and make some puzzle-themed crafts. If you have one that’s missing a piece, consider using it to make some cool things. Not sure what to make? Here are a bunch of puzzle projects and step-by-step tutorials.
January Wacky Theme Days
Here are a few more unique days for you to add to your calendar this month.
- Jan. 5: National Bird Day
- Use these 10 bird activities to learn all about birds.
- Jan. 6: Sherlock Holmes’ Birthday
- Read one of his famous stories as a family. If your kids have never read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books, start at the beginning with A Study in Scarlet.
- Jan. 9: National Word Nerd Day
- Have a family game night and play some fun word games together to show off your vocabulary skills.
- Jan. 11: Learn Your Name in Morse Code Day
- Have your older kids use this morse code translator to learn their name in morse code. Encourage your tweens to learn more about this technology that’s been around for decades and is still used today.
- Jan. 13: National Rubber Ducky Day
- Fill up the tub and have some fun competing in family rubber duck races.
- Jan. 14: Dress Up Your Pet Day
- Today’s the day to get your furry or scaly family member in on the fun. Your tweens can use their creativity to dress up your lovable pet.
- Jan. 15: National Bagel Day
- Grab or make some bagels for breakfast today. Or turn them into delicious chips with this easy recipe.
- Jan. 17: Benjamin Franklin Day
- Make some of Ben Franklin’s popular inventions with your tweens using household supplies.
- Jan. 19: National Popcorn Day
- Sure, you could just pop a bag of popcorn and call it a day. But why not have some fun with this holiday by making some savory popcorn or yummy sweet treats.
- Jan. 27: National Chocolate Cake Day
- This is a great reason to teach your tweens how to bake. Here are 30 ways you can dress up a chocolate cake box mix.
- Jan. 28: National Kazoo Day
- If you can stand the noise, let your kids learn how to play the kazoo.
- Jan. 30: Draw a Dinosaur Day
- With this cool book, tweens can learn how to draw all kinds of dinosaurs. Pair this with some interesting living books for a fun unit study.
- Jan. 31: Inspire Your Heart With Art Day
- Here are a few art projects that are perfect for older kids that take little time to complete.
National Holidays in January
While it’s fun to celebrate these crazy days, don’t forget the larger, more recognized holidays in January.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the third Monday of January. A great way to celebrate this influential man is to learn more about him. Read some good living books or watch interesting movies to see the essential role he played in the civil rights movement. You can also spend the day doing some good in the community by volunteering with your teens.
Find a way to incorporate one, or all of these silly, unfamiliar holidays into your month and I guarantee that you’ll have a January filled with unforgettable memories, learning opportunities, and some good old-fashioned fun.
Which weird theme day are you excited to celebrate in January?
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