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What are you using that is fun and "outside of the box"?


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I made phonics visual by drawing pictures using Waldorf techniques but using SWR phonograms.

 

Homeschoolshare.com lapbooks have really made school a lot of fun and gave us freedom from the same old same old humdrum.

 

Just having the child write about things they like and talk about the grammar and spelling as it comes up in the compositions.

 

File Folder games can be a nice break once and a while and if left out can be great for reviewing concepts already learned.

 

Using stories and manipulatives to introuduce new math concepts really opens things up before starting actual work on paper.

 

That's just a few things that have helped here.:001_smile:

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We have made Mondays our fun extras day. We forgo math, Latin and the like and instead do history projects and crafts, letter writing, hymn singing, picture study/art, nature walks, recitations of our memory work, as well as units studies (currently we are working through one on U.S. elections and are about to start one on the life of Mozart). It has made a big difference! I used to reserve Fridays for all the extras. But, honestly, I was usually so tired and burnt that we never got to half of what I scheduled. Doing everything on Mondays when we are fresh has really, really helped.

 

Also, I've recently set my kids up with private blogs and invited friends and family to read them. My son LOVES to write and this gives him a great outlet for writing about things that interest him.

 

This is a great question. I am really looking forward to more responses!

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We do the Monday fun day as well. My son has a PE group in the afternoon and in the am we work on science and history projects and experiments. We also implemented a digit sum checking technique that I found on Tami's blog for checking our multiplication problems. It is not really out of the box, but I can tell you since I found it a few days ago my son is excited about doing 3 and 4 digits multiplication problems which works for me!

 

I look forward to reading the rest of this thread.

 

Blessings,

 

Lisa

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My kids, especially my dd14, do art while I read aloud. It covers that subject, but it also means they really look forward to that part of the day. Dd either sketches or watercolours. Ds12 sometimes draws, colours in- at the moment- he is sewing on scout badges. We do several subjects together in the middle of our schoolday- poetry memory work, Latin or French, and history /literature- and we snack and enjoy this time.

 

Our week is fairly balanced with a homeschool group Monday afternoons, guitar lesson Tuesday afternoon, piano lesson Wednesday afternoon for dd and gym in the evening for ds, art class Thursday afternoon for dd, and Friday we are out all day for science classes, which involves LOTS of socialising (for kids and mums!). So somehow the breaking up of the week and plenty of outside time and social time keep things from getting heavy and serious at home. There is something to look forward to each day and each week.

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I am just looking for some creative new ideas- What are your outside of the box thinking ideas- that have had a big impact on your homeschool?

 

We play games on Friday mornings, they each pick one game, choices are:

 

Geography-Borderline: USA & World, Professor Noggins Countries of the World 1 & 2

Science-Professor Noggins: Human Body, American Birds & Wonders of Science

LA-Apples to Apples, Scrabble, Phonics Games, Bananagrams Create a Story Board

Math/Logic-Guess Who,Set, Clue, Visual Eyes,

Hue Knew?, Battleship, Blokus

History- Made for Trade, Professor Noggins Ancient Civilizations

Art-Art Shark, Impressionist Go Fish

 

We also do every other month Paper Bag Book Reports, my kids LOVE this more than anything! I modified the lasson plans below for home use ;)

 

Paper Bag Book Report

 

After selecting and reading a book independently, students will create a paper bag book report using an ordinary paper bag. Students should choose five-seven items to place in the bag to represent significant events or characters from the book. For example, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" might call for a soupspoon, a thermometer, a piece of dollhouse furniture, an ad for running shoes, etc. Students, after filling and decorating their bags, present them to the class. Each student should explain how the items he or she has chosen relate to the book. This makes for a fun oral presentation which exceeds the traditional book report for both the presenter and the audience.

 

Lesson Concepts and Materials:

 

Independent book selection, independent reading, analysis of plot, character and/ or theme, oral presentation.

 

Paperbags (large).

 

 

Procedures:

 

Each student chooses and reads a book over several weeks of a picture book for youngers.

 

Students analyze their books' characters, plots, themes, etc.

 

A already made sample works great for the kids to "SEE" the end result. I did mine form the picture book " The Selfish Giant".

 

Students devise written plans for their bag book reports, detailing five to seven items for the inside as well as layouts for each part of the outside.I require title, author, and publisher on the front; an internal conflict on the left side; an external conflict on the right side; or a favorite scene on the back.

 

Kids present their projects, in detail, to the family- first explaining the outside of their bags and then explaining each of the items inside. Questions from the family should be encouraged.

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I am just looking for some creative new ideas- What are your outside of the box thinking ideas- that have had a big impact on your homeschool?

 

This is our second year so I am tentatively going outside the box more frequently, and finding how much fun it is!

 

I guess our biggest leap has been with math. Still love Math-U-See, but we are also doing Evan-Moor Skill Sharpeners. It's a workbook that is much more visually exciting than MUS, and it's been good for the kids to see math that looks different than MUS. We also do math games (Snap It Up and Math Dash are favorites), make up games with basic fact flash cards, and use a big bowl of coins to "buy" meals. That PB&J will cost ya 87 cents, girlfriend.

 

I also took a long strip of brown wrapping paper and put numbers 1 - 12 along it (big) and we play math hopscotch. My kids pretend to be wolves...very smart wolves...and they have to use the big number line to point out the answers to my math problems with their paws. :blink:

 

Um....whatever works??

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We have lots of assorted science kits on hand that we never seemed to get around to using (or only used sporadically). So, I designated Friday as the day when we pull some of them out & use them. It gives us a break from our regular science routine, is fun for the dc, and it's using stuff up. :001_smile:

 

I also try to incorporate games, as others have mentioned.

 

One thing my kids have loved, loved, loved is that we sometimes read from a Harry Potter companion book during lunch. These books cover the folklore, myths, and mythologies that are included in the Harry Potter series -- telling the historical & cultural backgrounds of the items. It has been fascinating & has led to some great discussions. I find it easy to do at lunch because each section is approx. 1-3 pages, then we start discussing it. I know there are similar type books for the Lord of the Rings series, when we get to that. I think there are also Narnia companion books.

 

Great thread. I'm busy taking notes on all the wonderful ideas that have been shared!

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Here are a few more things we do. Flashcards and skip counting while jumping on the trampoline. (The boys love this.)

Read a louds are done while the boys build legos or color their History pages. When my son has a worksheet to do he usually bounces on a yoga ball.. or he holds the cat.. sometimes he tries to do both at the same time. lol

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Using paper crafts from history and science activity books from Don Silver and Michael Gravois (and others)- these have been such a HIT.

 

Head to Toe Science by Jim Wiese is a huge hit here, we're both learning and loving the experiments.

 

 

Videotaping the finale of a memorized poem- this has worked wonders for my shy dd8.

 

Dividing the year up into quarters and making corresponding notebooks- dd8 loves it and so do I- it's all in ONE place and it's not overwhelming.

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Do chickens count? :D My crew learns a lot by observing, chasing, and raising chickens. I think this holds true for any live creature really, but it's amazing how much keen scientific observation and interpretation my dc have demonstrated in the two years or so we've had a flock.

 

As a bonus, I get breakfast out of the deal! ;)

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Well, this is part of our curriculum, but my mom sure thought it was out of the box. How many of you are purposely trying to attract fruit flies? We set our trap and have about 5 of them now. We learned that if you put them in the freezer for a minute you can move them to another container without them flying away, and if we add brewers yeast to their banana meal, we can expect fruit fly babies. Pet Bugs is the best science book! We had to start Buzz and Bite early as soon as we saw it.

 

Tomorrow I am going to have DD jump to big letters on the floor in order to do her sight words in her spelling curriculum. I got that idea on these boards.

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I love the Monday idea. We had "Fun Friday" last year, but it kind of flopped. It was supposed to be the day we did fun projects, but I was usually tired from a full week of school that instead of being fun day it was catch up day.

 

Hmmm.. good to know. Maybe that's why our "Fun Friday" doesn't seem to be that fun yet :glare: We'll keep it for now (as this is only our third week) but will consider this after the first six weeks or so.

 

Oh, and our fun idea was actually a gift ds got for his fifth birthday -- a cool, domed bug jar. He catches bugs, I look them up, and we read about them. Ds has never liked bugs, but this has piqued his interest -- thanks, Shannon! (That's my friend whom we got it from.)

 

We also use Thank you cards as penmanship/copywork exercise, but I'm pretty sure this may not be out of the box..

Edited by sagira
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We are doing MOH Vol. 1 and so is a family that are good friends of ours. We are getting together a couple of times a month for field trips, movies, and projects. We've been to an iron works plant, watched Joseph King of Dreams and Prince of Egypt. This coming Monday is our big Ancient Egypt Day. We'll do projects together and have an Egyptian Feast. We plan on doing several things together this year.

 

I also go to this website to look for special days or weeks we might celebrate. It may be as simple as having a special food for the day. I love candy corn and can't wait for October 30th!

 

http://www.brownielocks.com/month2.html

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1. Logic workbooks: "Clip Clue Puzzles"...fun way to use your brain and Paper clips!!!

"Brainstorming Activities" ...1,2, and 5 minutes activities they are really loving! and last one, "Look, Listen and think" which has a couple different approaches to logic!

 

We always listen to books on tape, "Drive thru History," read-a-louds and Robert Krampf's site on a weekly basis. These activities seem to keep them happy!

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- snack

A tiny "snack cup" mid-morning (about the size of a film cannister or tiny dentist paper cup), filled with a handful of pretzel sticks, or peanuts, or a mix of nuts/raisins/chocolate chips. I don't know why, but the tiny size cup is what made this fun/special.

 

 

- daily "fun page"

Downloadable/printable online maze, simple word puzzle/crossword, dot-to-dot (there are some that drill math facts and create a cool geometric shape!), etc. Used a variety of sources such as "Gifted aze, very simple word puzzle/crossword, (Critical Thinking Activities in Pattern, Image, Logic by Dale Seymour; Gifted and Talented series by Amerikander, or others; Puzzlemania series (best of Highlights magazine variety of puzzles); Hidden Picture Puzzle books; maze books from Creative Child Press; activity books by Octopus Busy Day Books; etc.)

 

 

- write a very short story together

A game idea out of Peggy Kaye's "Games for Learning": roll a die, and that's how many words you get to write on your turn as you write a family story. My writing-phobia boys SO LOVED this game, that we finally had to make it a rule that if you rolled a "1" you got to roll over again! With slightly older children, you could probably use 2 dice (so you could write up to 12 words on your turn). The three of us together usually either wrote a good sized paragraph story, taking about 6-7 turns each.

 

 

- educational computer turn

A daily turn on the computer using educational software. This not only exposed them to math or language arts skills, but allowed me to work one-on-one with the other sibling! Especially good software: Reader Rabbit; Bailey's Book House (and others in this series); Mighty Math series; Math Blaster series; Schoolhouse Rock: Math or Grammar; Cluefinder series; I Love USA; software by The Learning Company.

 

 

- weekly Fun Friday

Finish the week with fun learning games (even games like Monopoly while we were learning/practicing money and making change!), or played "store" (taking turns being customer or checkout clerk, using various empty cans/boxes from the recycling), a science kit, or a big art project.

 

 

- widen our horizons

Weekly outdoor games or hike/socializing time with other homeschool families.

 

 

- monthly field trip

 

 

- unusual spaces

Read alouds outside or in unusual spaces. Do school in a big box, under a blanket-covered table, or in bed in jammies. I don't know why, but the novelty of place suddenly makes school "not school"!

 

 

- follow their interests in science

We would take time to follow bunny trails into areas of their interest -- for example, one year we were going through earth science -- but they caught a tomato horn worm; we built a little cage (a cylinder of window screen set into a disposable pie pan of wet paris of plaster, with another pie pan for the lid and a stick stuck upright into the plaster for the caterpiller to climb up) and watched the whole life cycle, and took time out to learn a little life science and set aside the earth science for that time.

 

 

- lots of science experiments

My kids LOVED mixing, building, exploding, touching, etc. Science kits and books of science experiments (with a quick, "why it worked" at the end) are the way to go!

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Phonics Bingo every Friday using Goldfish crackers, Teddy Grahams, M&M's, or chocolate chips for markers. We haven't done it this year, and the kids miss it. They are just getting too old for Phonics Bingo!

 

Also, assigning projects and watching their creativity flow. Last year, we had a Medieval Feast. I prepared all the food, and the kids spent several weeks planning the entertainment and the table decorations. I gave them books, told them what we were doing and when, and left the rest up to them. They loved being secretive about their plans--not letting dh and I know what was up.

 

This year, I have had a few tea parties. I assign a host, and that child prepares the drink and snack and comes up with a theme. My 12 year old did one yesterday. Her them was France. She confettied the table with French words and made poodle napkins for everyone. We had pudding tarts for a snack. Even my ds wants a turn at being host!

 

I also am assigning a state every few weeks for the kids to make a page on. They can make a postcard, travel brochure, notebook page, etc on that state.

 

Their creativity has astounded me. I give very few rules, and just a few ideas. They have to think, but they love the freedom to be creative.

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We video our book narrations.

 

We have homeschool open house so that grandparents and other family members can see our work. We make our invitations.

 

We get "book" movies to watch after reading certain books. Makes it so much fun and brings the book to life a little.

 

Every other Friday is book day. We visit our favorite book store and each child is allowed to purchase a few books.

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I starting working on my handwriting with my dd. We alternate words or lines in her handwriting book. Apparently my handwriting isn't as pretty as it once was. She has quit balking so much at working on hers and enjoys watching mine improve.

 

I dropped facts review completely, and replaced it with math games of all sorts.

 

We are learning geography with puzzles and maps this year. We have always talked about where things are when we read about them and how their place influenced whatever it is we are reading about. But this year, I have puzzle maps of each continent with peices shaped like each country. We are learning to put these together quickly. We are also taking countries and finding them on the big map. When we get more than one continent mastered, we will mix up the pieces. Puzzles are an awesome addition to geography this year.

 

I second the chickens. They are great. Natural science, habitat, animal husbandry, food chains (they eat scraps and grass and bigs, we eat the eggs), construction, responsibility, social structures, sanitation, soil quality, composting, nutrition, breakfast - chickens have it all.

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Guest fizzfever

Such good ideas, I sometimes feel I have lost the magic of homeschooling and it has just become another chore. I love fun Mondays, doing school outside (used to do that), by Friday I am toast. I have been doing this for 12 years and know that I probably have another 17 to go since I am pregnant again. Ok where is that excitement for learning, I know it was here somewhere ... maybe I need to check under the couch. Everything ends up under the couch. Quarters, remotes, last years Halloween candy, pens, pencils, hot wheels, car keys, books, missing homework, runaway socks, shoes. I'll check tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration.

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Guest fizzfever

Such good ideas, I sometimes feel I have lost the magic of homeschooling and it has just become another chore. I love fun Mondays, doing school outside (used to do that), by Friday I am toast. I have been doing this for 12 years and know that I probably have another 17 to go since I am pregnant again. Ok where is that excitement for learning, I know it was here somewhere ... maybe I need to check under the couch. Everything ends up under the couch. Quarters, remotes, last years Halloween candy, pens, pencils, hot wheels, car keys, books, missing homework, runaway socks, shoes. I'll check tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration.

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We are learning geography with puzzles and maps this year. We have always talked about where things are when we read about them and how their place influenced whatever it is we are reading about. But this year, I have puzzle maps of each continent with peices shaped like each country.

 

Tell me where you got these from!!! I've been looking for something like this for ages! Please tell me they can be ordered online. I can't make it to your corner shop, unfortunately. :)

Rosie

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