These are all things that have developed over time, suited to the comfort of our homeschooling. They are almost all geared towards every age, so these are activities we can do together, with everyone inspiring each other. I do some of these consistently, and some I pull off the shelf and dust-off for a few weeks or days and then put it back "on the shelf", so to speak. I just like having specific titles/activities, so that when I mention it to the kids #1 they know what I am talking about, #2 what will be expected or tried for, and #3 they will be excitedly anticipating it (some more than others). As with everything I do, sometimes the kids are all there, sometimes it ends up being one-on-one because the others are fighting or too busy playing to join us, but most of the time I have the whole group there by the end.
*Devotional: Pledge of Allegiance after marching around to a sung patriotic tune, Story from Friend or other inspirational piece, selection from our stories of the Bible, religious song, prayer, sometimes we work on memorizing together at this time. Each child "has" a day of the week where they get to pick the movie we watch for that day (typically one or less total for our complete screen time...and I try to encourage valuable ones), choose the marching song, hold the flag for the march and Pledge, pick the Friend story, and the song to be sung.
*The M&M dice game: everyone tries to add up the dice they have rolled before the others so they can get ONE M&M!!! WOOHOO!! And then the fun begins all over again with a new roll :). Tova has 3-4 dice and typically throws in some multiplication or subraction, Kel 2-3, .....Piper just rolls it and shouts out numbers, letters or names.
*"Authors in the Attic" a take-off from Little Women. Anyone who has written anything (whether I did "dots" for them to trace it, or they copied it out of a book) is invited to either my room, the darkened kitchen at night, or our crawl space. We light candles and use flashlights, someone takes a turn welcoming us to AUTHORS IN THE ATTIC! Then we share by candlelight or flashlight, using pen names, whatever amazing literary creation we have done for the week.
We have had everything from dramatic plays (Tova, aka Sophia Bell), letters soliciting money for education (Mary aka Zoey Zephyr) , the copying of random letters out of a shark book (Drew, aka Lightning Man), stories of high adventure (Kel, aka Lloyd Alexander...now Rick Riordan), illustrated "books" about beautiful places (Lily, aka Princess Penelope), and poems about zucchinis in bright pink bikinis talking to linguinis riding in lambriginis (sp?) (Quinn, of course...known as "Mark Wilson" in our crowd, who always titles his creations with the title of a Beach Boy tune.) A special treat is served, and then we are excused, after a time for random comments and praise.
*The Time Machine! I use some type of chronological history (workbooks from CostCo to Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer), throw out our "world atlas" blanket (some fancy or unique blanket saved for just such an occasion would work), let the kids punch the buttons, we wiggle and bounce as we are "thrust backwards in time". I paint an image of the place we have landed, allowing the kids to help if they know anything about that place in the world, and show them picture in books from the library, the national geographic or our world book encyclopedia to help them get a flavor of where they are. I like to get a unique treat or fun activity to go with it: combat with foam swords for our visit to the crusades, wafers/crackers and cheese as a type of way bread for the caravans across Egypt, building pyramids out of legos/blocks/sugar cubes, etc. for Egypt, writing in Chinese on long, taped-together pieces of paper for China or using chopsticks for dinner that night...etc.
*Anatomy "class": I get fun books from the library and go through the body system by system. There are some great Dover coloring books to go with this. There is a great deal of self-examination compared to some awesome dissection images of the human body.
*Table Time: a great time where mom is available to help the youngers with their oh-so-cool workbooks! We go through them randomly, based on what they are ready for, and throw out what is useless "overhead". The kids love to hear..."Oh, don’t worry about finishing that page...I think you have it" or "Wow! You are doing those so well, I bet you could finish those in five minutes and show daddy when he gets home!" and then set the timer. It’s all about "love of learning!"
*Art Class: I use a book from the library titled "Art for Kids" by Kathryn Temple, which is a very no-brainer, step by step way to teach any person how to draw better, and even draw some cool things! It is also sooooooo important to teach art to develop that right brain to help in analzying and seeing things from a different perspective (it goes into more detail about that in that book). Another art resource is the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal program. You can order kits from that to use...not that I have yet, but it looks wonderful!
*Games I use to teach:
The Farming Game–a taste of real farm economy, money math
M&M dice–(see above)
Rummikub–number sequence
Scrabble-spelling
Doodle Dice pattern distinction
Set-intense pattern distinction; a Mensa game, for what that is worth!
Blokus–strategy, shapes
Battleship– graphing
Monopoly–money math, real estate
Risk– geography
Pirate’s Dice– probability
Got It! –probability
Settlers of Catan– economy and trade
Chess–strategy, thinking ahead, memorizing and analyzing
*I don't use a lot of computer games, because it is so easy for my kids to get sucked into those, but will occasionally bring one in. I always hesitate when I hear incessantly "can I play on the computer?" rather than "I really want to learn about math on that cool math program we have!" One thing I do use is a "system" called "Geo-Safari" with fact sheets about everything from the parts of the body (goes great with anatomy) to geography around the world, from simple to complex. Apparently, you can even program your own fact sheets for them to work on, incorporating things like the presidents, things about your church, anything. I think you can get these at places like Amazon, etc. I got mine for $25 at a garage sale...it's amazing what you can get when you know what you are looking for!
No comments:
Post a Comment