Keeping school "fresh"

[Tabrett]

What do you do when you can tell your dc is bored doing the "fun" learning activities?

 

I can tell my dc in K is getting bored with cutting and pasting, play dough, using the slate to write her letters and coloring. These are the things that are suppose to be fun. I have all but dropped these activities because they are getting boring. Which, in return, makes school very boring because we aren't doing any "fun" learning activities.:001_huh: The catch 22 syndrome.

 

How to you keep the fun activities "fresh"?

[rafiki]

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[FO4UR]

Pick up a new school supply or material of their interest.

 

:iagree: sparkly pencils and a new play-doh toy set would make good stocking stuffers.;)

[Guest Alte Veste Academy]

What do you do when you can tell your dc is bored doing the "fun" learning activities?

 

I can tell my dc in K is getting bored with cutting and pasting, play dough, using the slate to write her letters and coloring. These are the things that are suppose to be fun. I have all but dropped these activities because they are getting boring. Which, in return, makes school very boring because we aren't doing any "fun" learning activities.:001_huh: The catch 22 syndrome.

 

How to you keep the fun activities "fresh"?

 

My oldest is doing K this year, with his 4 year old sister tagging along. He (and I) don't really love these kinds of activities and she adores them. The compromise is that they're offered and he doesn't have to participate if he doesn't want to. Sometimes her interest and excitement get him involved and sometimes not. It's not his nature. So, I'm no help!

 

The first thing that occurred to me, however, was that if they're tiring of these kinds of activities, they might respond to more in depth projects. So, if Sonlight 4/5 is about world cultures, I would get busy on some true handicrafts from different countries, make meals and snacks, listen to music from the country being studied, learn traditional dances, increase the science by studying the climate, animals, wildlife, etc. of the countries (all of this in fun, of course, not intensive learning).

 

for true multicultural art projects...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871925931/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_img_3

 

Dick Blick has some great multicultural projects listed free on the web site.

http://www.dickblick.com/lessonplans/discipline/multicultural/

 

For recipes, we like this cookbook although not all cultures are covered.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Frugal-Gourmet-Our-Immigrant-Ancestors/dp/0380717085/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229784589&sr=1-2

 

You can get a lot of recipes online though.

http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/

 

Maybe they would have fun creating an around the world calendar using events found here...

http://www.earthcalendar.net/index.php

 

Also, after listening to all the advice on these boards... Anytime I start trying to convince them of the fun they should be having, a virtual neon "Warning" light shines to remind me to cut these littles loose to go play in the sandbox. :)

 

The littles have risen. If you're interested, I'll try to get back and include some more of the stuff we're doing this year. We're doing a world tour ourselves.

 

Good luck!

 

Kristina

[PeterPan]

When my dd was that age, she didn't like any of those things either (coloring, cut and paste, dot to dots, etc.). However she did like art. I set her up a table with tons of types of paper, scissors, punches, cardboard tubes, etc. and just let her create. She really liked sculpey and then painting it after it was baked. She still likes Sculpey, btw. You can buy it in big boxes at Michael's with your 40% off coupon. She liked Kapla blocks and lincoln logs. She liked scraps of fabric to cut, glue, sew, etc. She liked her play tent and listening to books on cd. I made her a reading nest (think really big dog bed). My MIL made her a play kitchen out of an appliance box. It had a door that opened for the stove, red foam burners, a bowl and faucet for a sink, etc. Dd had tons of play food, pots, etc. and would cook and work at that, feeding her dolls at the little table, etc. The books on cd were a really big thing. She listened to all the Narnia books, the Little House series, Charlotte's Web, Uncle Remus, etc. over and over. It builds their vocabulary so they recognize words when they start reading.

 

I'm realizing this post sounds funny, as you asked about educational stuff. But really, that play IS education, kwim? If you want something a bit more structured to do, you could get the cookbooks and activity books that go with the american girl dolls or Little House, read the books and do activities from them. You could do WP AS1 or GtG. We did GtG at that age and it was good. You can get trail guides and take nature walks, read the One Small Square books and Let's Read and Find Out series. Usborne has some little intro books on science topics (magnets, light, etc.) that are very fun for this age. K5 is definitely the most fun age, the time when you can still play and call it school. Have fun! :)

Edited December 20, 2008 by OhElizabeth

[Haiku]

I did not do this on purpose to keep school "fresh," but a byproduct of the bulk of our schooling being reading a variety of good books is that my kids are constantly excited about school. We are always reading several very interesting books, so the kids are always looking forward to hearing them.

 

We do not do a lot of crafting/cutting/pasting because, to me, the payoff is small compared to the time spent.

 

Tara

[AnnetteB]

Kinders love to be given a pad of post-its and asked to label the house contents. The entire family ends up dotting the house with one and two word notes. They also enjoy making a grocery list for Dad. Paper, pencil, and an open pantry to "copy" the names of favorite foods. The list isn't usually very helpful since it is what we have and not what we need :lol:

[Karen in CO]

What do you do when you can tell your dc is bored doing the "fun" learning activities?

 

I can tell my dc in K is getting bored with cutting and pasting, play dough, using the slate to write her letters and coloring. These are the things that are suppose to be fun. I have all but dropped these activities because they are getting boring. Which, in return, makes school very boring because we aren't doing any "fun" learning activities.:001_huh: The catch 22 syndrome.

 

How to you keep the fun activities "fresh"?

You've gotten lots of good advice already. Now a couple of questions. What things are you cutting and pasting? What is the point of them? What are you trying to teach with these activities?

 

For the Practicing letters there are lots of ways to do that which will mix it up, but any of them done too much will become boring however, you can't throw pencils out of school. I'd take a look at what you are using and make sure that you keep doing some of the things the boring way - like ETC if you want to keep that.

 

For letter practice here are some of my favorite ideas:

 

 

• Use q-tips, to draw the letters on paper then very carefully glue beans or something to them to fill them in.

• Put a BIG piece of paper on the floor and draw them with your feet (in finger paint).

• Use watercolor and a paint brush on large paper to make them - large muscles are important too.

• If the weather is nice, go outside and use sidewalk chalk.

• Use shaving cream on the kitchen table - or in cookie sheets.

• Draw them on lap-sized white boards in lots of colors.

• Get the pre-cut card stock letters from the teacher store and cover each letter with pictures of things that start with that letter. Hang a clothes line across the house and have the kids hang up the letters with clothes pins in the correct order.

 

 

Basically, figure out what the point of the activity is and see how you can teach the same concept or skill and see if it is a skill that you really don't need to continuously teach. Kids don't need 3 years to learn to use scissors and glue. They are usually pretty quick at it.

[momsquared]

Fingerpainting and painting in general. DD goes gaga over any activities with paint. The Crayola paints can also go in the bathtub with no harm to the tub or the child - washes really easily. You can also get paint specifically for in the bathtub.

 

Water play. We played in the sink yesterday testing what floats and what sinks. She talked about this all day yesterday and more today. She was even able to explain to me why certain things floated and others didn't. You could use water play for measurement too.

[Rosie_0801]

There's a lot of good jigsaw puzzles for that age group. I'm looking to buy the geography puzzles from Timberdoodle.

:)

Rosie

[Tami]

I haven't read the other posts, but cutting and pasting doesn't necessarily keep school fresh. The key to keeping it fresh is to "keep it real." That is to provide real materials to work with, real life experiences, real books, real variety, and real choices.

 

For science: provide real specimens to work with, outdoor experiences, and exposure to nature classes, exposure to science museums

 

For history: a few real, living books and real choices (should we do a project, read a picture book, or color a map today?)

 

For variety: add rotating activities to your days such as: dancing, calisthenics, music, handicrafts, poetry, science experiments, cooking, art with top quality materials, simple sewing, Spanish or French songs, let your imagination run wild here, but take time to schedule something different each day

 

I hope this helps a little!

[Haiku]

I have been thinking about this thread today and wondering about why my kids still seem very enthusiastic about school even after we completed our 100th day on Friday. They have never complained about school this year. Every once in a while one of them says, "Do I have to do reading today?" or "Do I have to do Explode the Code today?" (and my answer is always "Yes"), but that's been a rarity.

 

I guess one thing I have wanted to guard against is "edutainment." I don't want to give my kids the sense that I have to dress up school in bells and whistles to make it fun and exciting. There are some things, such as learning to read and learning math facts, that simply have to be done, fun or not. I have not striven to make school "fun." I have attempted to choose materials that I feel are a good fit for my kids' personalities and learning styles, and I have attempted to choose materials that are interesting to my kids (and so far I have succeeded), but I have not been too worried about whether the materials are "fun." I hope my kids find them interesting, but I am not shooting for fun.

 

I started off history using the free Mosaic curriculum. I am still using its schedule, but we have pretty much completely dropped all the supplemental website activities, crafts, and "hands-on" experiences (making Egyptian bread, for example). I have found that there is a lot of work involved for little payback with these activities, and my kids seem to enjoy reading a good book over a website, no matter how well put together, entertaining, or informative, any day. I want my kids to take school seriously and know that sometimes it's just plain work even while I hope and strive for making their work interesting. Take, for example, my husband. He likes his work because it's interesting and challenging, but I asked him whether his job is "fun" and he said no.

 

My oldest child goes to school. Her school is very into "edutainment," and I think that they waste massive amounts of time with very little to show for it. They spent an entire week building rockets out of soda bottles and had some engineers from a local university come to help them shoot them off, and the engineers measured trajectory and height for the kids. I took my little kids to the school to watch. My daughter's class stood around in clumps gossiping and talking about movies and music. They were outside for two hours so that each kid could spend a total of about 5 minutes shooting off their rockets.

 

At first I was very impressed with the project, but after thinking about it, I realized that they had spent approximately 7 hours on a project that they could have studied in a classroom, with books, in about 1/2 an hour. To me, it was a classic example of edutainment. I doubt any of the kids will remember much about that day.

 

I think I have started rambling, so I'll try to contain myself now. I know that your son is very young, and I know that you want to keep him engaged in what he's learning. I guess what I am trying to say is that I have found (in my 20 weeks of homeschooling my kids) that shedding the "extras," spending small amounts of time each day on the "necessaries," reading a ton of great books, and letting my kids have most of the day to play has kept my kids excited and engaged in school. I realize that not all kids will have the same interests and learning styles as my kids, but you may find that the less you try to dress up school, the more interested your son is.

 

Tara

[EKS]

When that happened with my K'er I added K12. He loved the history/geography and science.

[Lovedtodeath]

I started off history using the free Mosaic curriculum. I am still using its schedule, but we have pretty much completely dropped all the supplemental website activities, crafts, and "hands-on" experiences (making Egyptian bread, for example). I have found that there is a lot of work involved for little payback with these activities.

 

I completely respectfully, disagree. I dropped our Geography for a while. We make projects and notebooking pages with it. School really became a drag for both of us, and we kept dropping more and more. We love school when we keep it complete, projects and all.

 

As far as keeping it fresh, we switch programs every 7-12 weeks. :)