Learn about Heaven this Halloween

Here is one last Halloween idea for you. Death is so prevalent in the whole Halloween extravaganza. Why not use that to your advantage in your home school? Learn about heaven!

• Study Revelation with your children. Yes, it is a challenging book of the Bible, but Kay Arthur has a study guide for children. Her study guides never disappoint.
• Read Heaven for Kids by Randy Alcorn.
• Read What about Heaven by Kathleen Bostrom. This book is written for younger children and includes Bible references in the back to further your study of heaven.

Think outside of the box this Halloween! Learn about heaven instead of buying into our culture’s ideas about death .

Make Oobleck on Halloween

Count down to Halloween by exploring fluid mechanics in a multisensory way. Begin by reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss. (Oobleck is what the king has the magicians create, and it comes from the sky.) Then make Oobleck yourself. There are recipes all over the internet, but Make and Takes includes great photos. This is also a video that shows you many possible ways to experiment with Oobleck. (Please note that the video does not include any audio.)

Oobleck: A Non-Newtonian Fluid - The funniest bloopers are right here

Enhance your learning by discussing:

• the properties of liquids and solids,
• Non-Newtonian fluids,
• and what viscosity is.

Experimenting with Oobleck is a great way to get your kinesthetic, tacticle, and/or visual learners engaged in learning about liquids and solids. Have fun and get messy this Halloween!

Charlotte’s Web Activities

My all time favorite book is Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. I cry every time I read the ending. There is so much to the book; it is full of inspiration for learning. Have you read it recently? The friendship theme is simple enough to make the book worth reading to children as young as eight, but the nuances in the book make it worth reading with high schoolers. Here are a couple of ideas for what you could do with this wonderful classic book.

• Study spiders. The life cycle of the spider is really important in the book, so learning about them would enhance your children’s understanding of the book.
• Study pigs. Wilbur is a main character, after all.
• Start a vocabulary study. You can hang a web (web material is readily available this time of year) in your school space. Every day post a new vocabulary word on it. Have the children learn what it means and make it the word of the day; use it correctly as often as possible throughout the day.
• Use Charlotte’s Web as a starting point for reading other literature. For example, read the various versions of The Three Little Pigs. Read Anansi the Spider, a folktale. Read other friendship books such as The Secret Garden, Because of Winn-Dixie, or The Hundred Dresses. With little ones you can sing songs such as “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “This Little Piggy”.

Have fun reading my favorite book!

Day of the Dead

Jose Guadalupe Posada: Calavera Photo by trialsandderrors

As Halloween approaches, I continue to think of ways to keep with the spirit of the season. One idea is to do social studies project on the Day of the Dead (el día de los muertos), a traditional Mexican holiday celebrated on November 1st (honoring deceased children) and 2nd (honoring deceased adults). Although towns all over Mexico commemorate the holiday differently, there are similarities in the events that each location holds. There are also religious overtones woven into the traditions.

• Research the holiday and create a brochure about the traditions of the day.
• Make a map of Mexico. Flag certain cities and explain how they commemorate el día de los muertos.
• Make your own sugar skulls or skull mask.
• Bake el pan do los muertos, a sweet bread baked in the shape of bones.
• Research and make your own catrina, a humorous figure of an upper class woman depicted as a skeleton. They are associated with the Day of the Dead.

Use this as an opportunity to learn a little about a different culture.

Homeschool Visual & Kinesthetic Checklist

Photo by Tony Crider

Are there parts of your homeschool routine that are frustrating you and your children? In a previous post I mentioned creating a visual agenda or checklist to help with difficult times of the day. I have been working with C4 to create a few checklists for a few challenging times during the day. So far C4 has found the checklist for getting ready to leave the house helpful and it has made that process less trying for us. She really likes having something to help her focus.

I wanted to share the process of making the checklists and show you pictures of ours.

• One afternoon we discussed the problems we were having with getting ready to leave the house, and I suggested that having a checklist would help. C4 agreed that it sounded like a good idea.
• We wrote a list of what she needs to do in order to be ready to leave. (shoes, coat, hat, mittens, backpack, & sit)
• We used catalogs and parenting magazines to find pictures of these items to cut out. These tend to be the most appropriate magazines to use with young children.
• I drew a line around the picture that we wanted, and C4 cut along that line.
• C4 glued each picture onto an index card.
• I had intended on putting the cards into a pocket chart, but C4 wants to manipulate the cards. So we keep them in a hanging folder on the door. She pulls them out and files through them as she gets ready to go.
• We repeated the process for the morning routine. We looked for the following pictures: the potty, brushing teeth, brushing hair, getting dressed, & eating.

Shoes

Mittens and Hat

Jacket

Backpack

Sitting

Halloween Biology

This Halloween you can opt out of the ghosts and goblins, but still use the gory spirit of the season to your advantage in your home school. You can learn about the human body. Create a lapbook or a small book reporting on the different systems or just on a particular system.

• Study the skeletal system. Construct your own skeletons and name the major bones in the body. Dissect a whole fish from the grocery story and investigate its skeleton. Learn about x-rays. Research calcium and how it is absorbed.
• Study the heart. In your book you can name the parts of the heart, include a mini report on Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (the first heart surgeon), include data from heart rate experiments, etc.
• Study hematology. Blood is quite gory! Learn about red and white blood cells and about how blood coagulates. Investigate blood typing. Contact the Red Cross to find out more about blood donation.

The ideas are endless, but hopefully this will get you thinking outside of the box. Have fun!

Homeschool Mom: Persevering or Proving Herself

I just read a great article in “Christianity Today” about “dropping out” of homeschooling. It got me thinking that home education is a huge commitment and perfectionists like me might wrestle with the decision to continue homeschooling. As I was reading this article, I kept thinking that I often do not show myself any grace, and the mother in the article didn’t either. She talked about her struggle to let go of homeschooling. She wanted it to work even though nothing she was doing made things improve, and she clearly heard God telling her to send her children to public school. It can be difficult to distinguish between perseverance and the need to prove something to everyone else. Perseverance is good, but proving yourself to others is not.

My husband and I have decided this:

• We will think about and plan school one year at a time. It is impossible to think through all of the possibilities and determine what will be best for our children beyond that time frame.
• We will remember that each child is unique. Home education may be good for one child, but not good for another.
• We will work together as a team to educate our children. Ecclesiastes 4:9 tells us that we need each other. Hopefully that will help us make better decisions about our children’s education.
• We will pray about the direction of our home school. Right now we feel called to home educate our children next year full time, but God may have different plans after that. I want to follow His plan!

Show yourself some grace and pray. Homeschooling is hard work and rewarding. But if you find that home education is not working for your children, then investigate alternatives.

Engage Younger Children While Homeschooling

Photo by Avolore

It can be really tough to homeschool when you have a little one in tow. How can you get through anything when you have to stop all of the time to redirect your little one? Here are a couple of tips to help you out.

To Engage the Little One

• Plan a related “project” for the little one, so she can sit at the table with you while you work. If you are working with math manipulatives, let your little one have a few of them. Give him/her an assignment such as matching the blocks.
• Invest in Color Wonder® markers and paper (or some other similar brand). Then you won’t have to watch as closely while s/he colors.
• Use a timer to help you. Set the timer for a certain amount of time. Tell your little one that you will check in with him/her when the timer goes off. This will help you and the little one make sure that you do actually take a break to check in.
• Use books on tape. I know that my little one loves wearing the head phones. Listening to the tapes is exciting since the readers use fun voices and there is music. You might have to practice with the recorder a bit before you expect your child to use it with less supervision.
• Create a “Work Center” for your little one. Find a special bag or suitcase that looks like a briefcase. Put lots of interesting and inexpensive things in the bag. Include your junk mail that does not have any personal information on it, sticky notes, and old greeting cards. Recycle letter size cardboard inserts. You can even include old monthly calendars - the advertisement ones or ones you aren’t using anymore. Add a package of washable crayons to the bag, too. Little children love using everyday things adults use.

I hope these ideas help your little one to stay busy doing age appropriate “work” during your school time.

Home School Halloween Math

Even of you don’t participate in Halloween, you can have a little fun with it while staying away from the ghosts and ghouls. Here are a few tips for learning math in your home school this October.

Bag of Halloween Candy Math

• Estimate how many candies are in the bag. Discuss strategies for making accurate estimates (size of candies, counting a few, etc.) Then count them. Try putting the candies into groups of ten to make it easier to count.
• Make a graph of the different types of candies that come in the bag.
• Poll a sample of people to find out which candies from your bag are their favorites. Create a graph with the results.
• What shapes do candies come in? Can you find a sphere? A cube? A cylinder?
• Learn a little about fractions. Empty a bag of M & M’s. Find out what colors there are. Find out how many candies there are. Count how many of them come in each color. Now figure out the fraction of the total bag each color is.

Have fun eating some of the candy after doing some math!

Memory Verse Meaning

In my home school memory verses are part of our curriculum. I think it is a good discipline to learn scripture so that you have God’s word in your head instead of all of the toxic things we encounter in the world. I think that children need all of the armor they can get when they are faced with our fallen world. The problem that I have right now is helping my kids to actually understand the meaning of the scripture. I have a plan, though!

• Start with a lesson about the verse using something concrete to explain the meaning. For example, this summer we learned John 15:5. I used a lesson the I found at First-School to teach the essence of the verses. We used grapes on the vine to demonstrate what it means to be the vine and the branches.
• Draw pictures, take photos, or use clip art to visually describe of the meaning of the verses. Hang the pictures next to your child’s bed so you can reference them when you recite the verses together. Make sure the pictures are good descriptors of the verses’ meaning.
• Incorporate some kind of motion to go along with the verses. When we learned Luke 15:1-7, we played a shepherd game similar to “tag”. One person played the shepherd while everyone else played the sheep and wandered around. The shepherd had to herd the sheep.
• Make up or find a song that teaches the message of the verses. Kids love to sing songs and songs that teach the meaning of scripture will help them to own it.

I hope that your memory verse lessons become more meaningful! Do you have any tips that have made understanding scripture easier for your children?