Homeschoolers, Make Math Facts Fun!

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Learning math facts can be boring and tedious. Here are a few ways that you can make learning them more interesting in your home school. Trying these ideas might motivate your children to memorize those facts instead of counting!

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• Teach fact family trees. For example, one fact family tree is 2,3,5. 2+3=5, 3+2=5, 5-3=2, 5-2=3. It also works for multiplication and division - 2,3,6. 2×3=6, 3×2=6, 6÷2=3, 6÷3=2. Remembering three numbers is an easy way to memorize the basic facts. Also have your child write the equations on trees with the three numbers written on top.

• Practice addition facts by playing dice games. Create a game board and game pieces. Roll the dice and add the two numbers together. Move that many spaces forward on the board.

• Another way to practice addition facts is to play “Make 10″ with a set of cards numbered 0-9. It is played just like “Go Fish” except you add two numbers whose sum is 10.
• Practice multiplication facts by playing “Circles and Stars”. Roll a die. Draw that many circles. Roll the die again. Draw that many stars in each circle. Write the equation that your picture represents.

Have fun learning basic math facts by making a few simple changes in your homeschool curriculum.

Rehearsal Learning

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Rehearsal.

I’m not talking about the kind of rehearsal you have before a play, but if that’s what comes to your mind,  you are on the right track. I mean that some kids need to practice before they are expected to “perform”. For example, my little one whispers words that she is practicing before she says them for everyone to hear. There are many ways to use rehearsal in your home school.

• Very shy children, children who do not react well to the unexpected, and autistic children benefit from practicing social scenarios. They learn what to expect and what to say. Rehearsal allows the children to make mistakes and get coached in social skills.
• Children who struggle with writing, either the act of writing or with the process of writing, benefit from rehearsing their ideas before they write them down. Simply removing the frustration of actually writing can be a huge relief to kids who struggle to write. You might notice more insightful written thoughts and better organized writing.
• Children learning a foreign language can rehearse useful and typical conversations before you assess them on their conversational skills. This gives them the opportunity to think about vocabulary and verb tenses ahead of time. They can correct grammatical errors on the spot without the risk of failure. This also works for written work.
• Rehearsing by taking a practice test can also alleviate test anxiety. Through rehearsal children know what to study for and what to expect on the test. Often they perform better on the test.
• Young children can learn basic safety skills by rehearsing. Recently my daughter and I rehearsed an emergency scenario. I pretended to be unconscious and a friend talked her through making a 9-1-1 call. It was both enlightening to me and helpful for her. She’s now more equipped for emergency situations.

Rehearsal is a unique and helpful learning tool. Try it out in your home school.

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!

Engage Younger Children While Homeschooling

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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?

Unconventional Inspiration for Your Home School

One of my favorite things about home education is that I can use unconventional methods of teaching since my kids tend to respond to that. So I look for inspiration all over the place. Today I found my inspiration in the Christian Book Distributors catalog in the educational toys. I found dolls, action figures, puppets, costumes, a set of nesting/stacking blocks, magnetic play sets, and board games. All of these different means of teaching got me thinking about the variety of ways that I can reach my children while playing to their strengths. I have been thinking about how the toys could work to help my children learn important concepts. These ideas are great ways to work with kinesthetic and visual learners.

Improve Reading Comprehension: Dolls, action figures, and puppets can help with reading comprehension. Have your child retell stories using these props. You can use that as an assessment tool, too, because you’ll clearly see what your child understood about the story. Your children can also use costumes to act out scenes from books.

Reinforce Mathematics, Motor, and Language Skills: Stacking/nesting blocks teach your child about volume and ordering items from smallest to largest and vice versa. Also the conversations that you have describing the blocks and what you are doing with them will develop language skills. If your blocks have pictures on them, you can create stories or retell stories (particularly if your bloacks are related to a certain story such as Christmas). Stacking and nesting requires a fair amount of motor skills. The list goes on!

Reinforce Science Concepts, Language, and Motor Skills: Magnets are so much fun for children to play with. They learn about what magnets will and won’t “stick” to. Children can tell stories with magnetic play sets. Magnetic words can be used to build sentences, write poems, and learn vocabulary. The other great thing about these play sets is that they can be reused and no worksheets are required.

Build Memory Skills: Board games are fun, but they also have a repetitive nature to them, so they help you to memorize information without boring your child. It is also a great way to spend time with your child.

This unconventional inspiration has helped me to think outside of the box and meet my children’s educational needs better.

Intentionally Observing

I have been thinking more about the role that observation plays in educating our children. Observing your children is one of the most important things that you can do for them because it helps you to make educated decisions about how you approach your curriculum and your child’s learning.

I would venture a guess that you already make observations informally. You most likely would be able to describe what types of work your child gravitates toward or avoids. I’m sure you are able to list your child’s struggles and strengths. So what am I talking about? I am suggesting that you be more intentional about observing and acting on what you observe.

Create a notebook that you will keep your notes in. Record the date, time, and a description of the task at hand that you make your observations of. Take some time every day to write notes about your child’s learning. Take notice of your child’s reaction to how you presented an assignment. Observe how your child solves problems and what helps your child get unstuck when s/he encounters something difficult. Take notes during those times of the day that you find it difficult for you and your child to get through. Review your notes regularly - every day, every couple of days, or once a week depending on your situation. Try to find patterns in the data that you have collected. Perhaps the method that you are using to teach history is causing problems. Your child may need a movement break between lesson, Maybe your child is ready to take the math concepts you’ve been exploring to a new level. You might find out that your child is a visual learner. Look at things you should do more of, things you should do less of, and things that you want to keep the same. Then make a plan based on those observations. Be intentional about your choices. Then make more observations based on your plan.

You may be surprised by the power of the cycle of observation and planning. Your experiences in your home school will change dramatically when you take the time to really observe your child at work.

Football Theme

I have a dear friend, Rose, who has inspired this post.

Do you have a kiddo who absolutely loves football? Use this passion as a way into learning. You can use the football theme to teach practically anything this year in your home school. Here is what I mean.

Social Studies:

• Have your child create football trading cards that include information about important historical figures.
• On a map locate where the home stadiums are for each NFL team.
• Create a time line of the history of football.

Math:

• Convert yards into feet.
• Throw a football around the backyard, make an estimate for the distance it went, and measure it in feet and in yards.
• Calculate someone’s quarterback rating.

Science:

• Investigate gravity. How long does the ball stay in the air and how high does it have to go?
• Investigate wind resistance. Why is the ball oblong?
• Investigate properties of materials. What makes leather hard when it gets cold?
• Investigate conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. When a player is tackling another, how fast does the light person have to be going to stop the heavy person? (f=ma, e=mv²)

Writing:

• Write a series of newspaper articles on key players for each team.
• Create a series of letters that one of the players would write to family members. They should be written as if the player is actually writing.
• Write a research paper on one of the players.
• Write a fictional story about a football.

Handwriting:

• Write the NFL teams’ names in cursive.
• Write sentences about football in cursive.
• Make a football shaped book for spelling words that are inspired by football written in cursive and in sentences.
  

  

Reading:

• Read newspaper articles about the players.
• Read any available biographies on the players.
• Read football inspired stories.
• Research the rules for the NFL.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, so be creative! Have fun learning through football!

A Snapshot of Kinesthetic Learning

I’ve been writing a lot lately about how to meet your kinesthetic learner’s needs. I thought it would be worth  giving an example of what teaching to these needs looks like. Here is a snapshot of what kinesthetic learning looks like in my home school.

Recently, we went on a hike with our adventure bag to the Garden in the Woods to see the art installation of big bugs. The bug sculptures can be found along the one mile hike, and the signs next to them have information about the bugs. We took some time to read the information in between running and enjoying the scenery along the way. One of the signs gave us a comparison of damsel flies and dragon flies, and in order to explain the comparison better, I had the children act it out. Apparently, damsel flies hold their wings behind their backs while dragon flies hold their wings along their sides. So we pretended to be a dragon fly and a damsel fly by positioning our arms as if they were the wings.

We also spent time using or magnifying glasses to make observations of the bugs on the ground, the plants, and around the pond. We tried to find the bugs that were in the sculptures in the art installation. They were especially interested in finding damsel flies and dragon flies and were proud that they were able to identify them. The kids drew their bug observations in their journals.

At the end of the hike we reviewed a few of the things that we learned, and surprisingly, the kids remembered that particular fact about dragon flies and damsel flies. They were even able to correctly identify a damsel fly sculpture that was for sale at the gift shop and proudly demonstrated the difference between the two bugs to a naturalist there.

So why did this work? The hike itself gave the children the opportunity to run, walk, climb, and touch things in a productive way. Using their bodies to explain what the two bugs looked like allowed them to get a clearer picture in their minds of the description of difference between them. The big sculptures also gave them the chance to really see what the bugs look like. After all of the movement, the kids were able to focus enough to use magnifying glasses and write in their journals, an activity that requires a fair amount of concentration.

I hope that this example helps you as you plan your school work.