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3 Responses to Creative home schooling ideas?

1. I have a preschooler and a 4th and 5th grader.

   For trips here’s what we’ve done lately: went to the zoo, a farm, a nature center, a children’s museum, took a trolley ride, visited a large city ( we are from a very rural community ), gone on nature walks….

   We haven’t used many films in home school yet, but I plan on it when they are a little older for History.

   Kindergarten is a great age! It really doesn’t take much to excite a 5 year old. 🙂 As long as you seem to be having fun they will go along.

   I plan on taking my youngest to the library to get his very own Library card soon.

   hope that helped

   

   hsmom
   August 9, 2013 at 7:57 am
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2. Depends on the kid.

   Mine did really poorly on a unit on bones and muscles, so we went to the local science museum the next day where they were running the “Bodyworks” exhibit, with hands-on stuff that explained those very concepts. Got back to the car, read him the questions from the test and he aced the whole thing. The Science museum is FABULOUS for that stuff.

   We also have a subscription to Brainpop.com and Brainpopjr.com that they like a lot; I’ll record stuff on the PVR that I think is relevant and edit it the night before and have them watch those pieces I want them to see for the next day. YouTube is good for that, too.

   My eldest is dysgraphic and his writing is atrocious, so we ended up shelling out $ 1,200 to a pediatric neuropsychologist to tell us it’s a biological origin, not an issue of laziness or poor teaching technique. So he uses the computer a LOT. He hates coloring (it’s physically painful for him after a short time) so I let him use PhotoShop if I think it’s important for him to color something.

   We’re at the library a great deal, and I try to take them to local events, like the open house that the NOAA center holds every year, or the family activities that the Art Museum hosts.

   And we do everyday stuff that involves math, science, writing; last night we went out for pizza and ended up using forks, crayons and the pizza pan to demonstrate the properties of levers and fulcrums.

   If we lived where there was more snow, I’d have them build a trebuchet for snowballs out of PVC pipes this winter.

   

   K
   August 9, 2013 at 8:12 am
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3. Outdoor:
   -Make and hang bird feeders. Experiment with different kids of bird feed to see which one attracts the most birds and what kinds of birds they attract.
   -Get a bird book from the library, or a CD of bird calls. See how many birds you can identify.
   -Get a book about animal tracks and see if you can find signs of life
   -Pick up trash around the park and learn about recycling and the environment
   -Play with sand and water and learn about erosion
   -Go on nature walks with plant field guides. Let kids take pictures of plants they recognize, then go home and make a little journal with one of the pictures, the flower name, and a fact they learned about the flower on each page.
   -Go on scavenger hunts. Give them lists of pictures or words they have learned and let them find the things on the list.
   -Plant a garden together and learn about what makes plants grow. Let the kids make signs for the garden with drawings and names of the plants they are growing.
   -Place a tall clear container outside with a ruler inside of it and measure rainfall in the rainy season
   -Make pinwheels, kites, or wind socks during arts and crafts to hang outside. While the kids make their wind craft, read a book about wind, hurricanes, or something similar out loud to them.
   -Teach the kids about how earth worms help a garden and let them help find some.
   -Get a Butterfly tent and raise caterpillars with the kids. Teach about metamorphesis, and have them keep a Butterfly Journal with weekly entries (either in writing or drawings for the ones who don’t write yet) about what is happening with the caterpillars. Release the butterflies in a park or in your garden when they are ready.
   -Make a sundial to put outside. This can be fun for a wide age range. You can incorporate lessons in history, the solar system, or even something as basic as telling time.
   -Read about constelations, moon phases, planets, how seamen used stars to navigate at sea, or what ever else seems appropriate, then go to an observatory, planetarium, home of a friend with a telescope, or just somewhere dark enough to see the stars and talk about what you see and how it relates to what you learned
   -Learn about the water cycle. Place a cup in the center of a large bowl (weighted down, of course), and fill the bowl with dirty water. Then stretch clear plastic wrap over the top of the bowl and place a pebble in the center just over the cup. Place outside in the sun and let the kids observe over a period of time as the water evaporates out of the bowl and drips into the cup, leaving the dirt behind.
   -Turn hop scotch into a counting game.
   -Use sidewalk chalk to play outdoor number, letter, and shape games.
   -Get a book about deciduous trees and learn what trees in your area lose their leaves in Autumn. Make predictions based on what you learned about which tree in your backyard will change color and lose its leaves first.
   -Collect and identify autumn leaves. Press the leaves in a book, or make rubbings of them with crayon. Make an Autumn Leaf journal with a pressed leaf/rubbing and a picture of the tree it came from on each page. Add facts about the trees as is age appropriate.
   -Go on a nature walk in the summer and observe what kinds of animals are out and about and what you can see them doing. Have the kids write journal entries about what they notice, and encourage them to use all their senses (What do you see, hear, smell, feel, etc). Do this again in the Fall, Winter, and Spring and compare observations to show how animals and the environment change in each season.
   -Learn about how bees make honey, then arrange a trip to a bee farm to see how people get the honey.
   -Learn about chemical reactions by making CO2 rockets with film canisters, construction paper, baking soda and vinegar. Experiment to see what combination of baking soda and vinegar makes the rocket go the highest.
   -Learn map reading skills by making “treasure maps” of a local park or of your neighborhood. Give the kids maps and instructions to find a “treasure”.

   Indoor:
   -Do baking experiments in the kitchen. Find out why eggs, for example, are an important ingredient in cakes by making three versions of the same cake recipe, one with all the eggs needed, one with only half the eggs needed, and one with no eggs. Let the kids do research and make predictions about what will happen.
   -For younger kids, use cooking or baking as a chance to practice counting, measuring, fractions, and reading skills.
   -Turn a trip to the grocery store into a number game. Let the kids help you count money, figure out which bag has more apples, which price tag has the smallest number, etc. For kids who are less number-ready, work on identifying colors in the produce section and determining which is bigger, smaller, heavier, etc.
   -Teach the kids how to look up and find their own books at the library, then arrange a library scavenger hunt with questions or riddles they need to solve by using their libr ary skills and finding information in certain books.
   -For kids who are computer-ready, play a similar game, only this time make it an Internet scavenger hunt.
   -Do a Pioneer unit study. Read books like Little House on the Prairie, learn about what life was like back then, and do activities like baking bread, making candles, or churning home made butter in a babyfood jar. Learn why shaking the jar turns the liquids inside of it into solids and how this was discovered.
   -Learn about oil spills and how they affect the environment. Have the kids add vegetable oil to containers of water and experiment to see how various nontoxic household cleaning products help to clean up the oil.
   -Play Scrabble, Hangman, or other word games with Spelling/Vocabulary words.
   -Turn sorting clothes into a color matching game for younger kids.
   -Learn about musical instruments and what makes the keys on a xylophone or the strings on a guitar produce different notes. Make a water glass xylophone and let the kids experiment by adding or removing water from each glass to see what kind of notes they can produce.
   -Listen to audio books or read out loud together as a family at breakfast or lunch time each day. Talk about what you read.
   -Read a short story or fable with the kids, then have them make paper bag puppets of some of the characters and retell the story in their own words as a puppet show.
   -When you start learning about symmetry in math, incorporate that into an arts and crafts project. Have kids paint a picture on one side of a piece of paper, then fold the paper in half while the paint is still wet. Open the paper up again and observe that now the picture is the same on both sides. It’s symmetrical. Alternative, you can cut or hole punch a pattern into a folded piece of paper and get the same affect.
   -In addition to the above activity, talk about and look for things in nature that are symmetrical. Butterflies, leaves, the human body, etc.
   -Make Alphabet Soup. Let your little kids pretend to be master chefs (you can even play dress-up for this one). Give them a big pot and have them fill it with one item for each letter of the alphabet. If you have more than one kid, see who can find something for every letter first, then line the items up in “ABC” order as they tell you what they found for each letter.
   -When learning about patterns in math, let the kids use plastic craft beads and string to make their own patterns. Turn it into a craft project by making bracelets, necklaces, or if you’re feeling really ambitious, a beaded curtain to hang in their bedroom.

   

   i_come_from_under_the_hill
   August 9, 2013 at 9:01 am
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