Sticky Note Learning: Miscellaneous Ideas

Here are a few more creative ideas for using sticky notes to enhance learning in your homeschool.

~Create a scavenger hunt. On each sticky note write a clue about where the next sticky note is. Or you could include math problems, trivia questions, or riddles on the sticky notes. Place the notes all over the house. This is a great activity for rainy or snowy days or times when it feel like you need to change things up a bit.

~Practice descriptive writing with famous paintings. Have your children write descriptive sentences about the artwork on individual sticky notes. Post the notes around the painting. Then the notes can be moved around in order to plan a paragraph or a story about the painting. (Photo courtesy of tomsaint11)

~Practice rhythm. Write sixteenth notes, eighth notes, quarter notes, and rests on individual sticky notes, and place them in any order on a wall. Use percussion instruments such as drums, claves, or a xylophone and play the rhythm posted. Mix the notes up and play the new rhythm. (Photo courtesy of calm a llama down)

~Have your child label scientific drawings using flag post-it notes. For example, create a poster with a drawing of a flower on it. Have your children use the flags to label the parts of a flower. The same poster can be used later as a test of that knowledge.

Have fun!

Homeschool Sticky Note Science

Sticky notes can motivate your kinesthetic child to learn science concepts in your homeschool. Try out these ideas.

~Create a Periodic Table using a different color sticky note for each column on the table. Have your child write the symbols for each of the elements on individual sticky notes. You can even expect your child to write the atomic mass of the element on the sticky. Then each of the sticky notes needs to be placed on the wall in order to construct the table. Another time you can scramble up those sticky notes and have your child reconstruct the table based on the color coding and atomic mass of each element. Ask questions and discuss the similarities of the elements in the same columns. “Are they liquids or gases?” “Are they colorless?” Are they reactive or non reactive?”

~Have your child use sticky notes to show the life cycles of different animals. Have your child draw a picture of each stage in the cycle and label it on individual stickies. You can then post different life cycles on the same wall in order to compare them and make conclusions.

~Be a weather tracker! Laminate a map of the US and post it. Use different color flag stickies for the various kinds of weather and write that information on a key on the map. Each day have your child record the weather forecast by placing the correct color flag in the different regions of the country (Midwest, North East, etc.). Your child can even be the meteorologist and give the weather report to you each day. As you collect data, make observations about weather patterns that occur and discuss.

There are many other ways that you can use sticky notes to learn science, too. I hope this gets you started!

Photo courtesy of General Wesc

A Traditional Literature Theme: Nursery Rhymes & Fables

March is a month filled with inspiration for themes for learning in your homeschool. This month many people will be taking advantage of St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps you don’t want to read all about Irish history and culture, but you can twist that theme and read traditional literature instead – myths, folktales, fairy tales, fables, and legends.

My Favorite Author is using this theme this month, too. Stop by that blog for interviews with authors and reviews of books related to this theme. “What can you do with a traditional literature theme?” you ask. It is one of my favorite literature studies because it is truly a rich topic. Today I am sharing a few ways to engage your children in this study with Nursery Rhymes and Fables:

Photo by aturkus

Nursery Rhymes

Nursery Rhymes are very short, funny, poetic stories. They are often historically and politically significant.

• Your little ones can participate in this study by reading Nursery Rhymes. These funny rhymes build phonemic awareness and are easily
  memorized. Have your little ones choose a few to commit to memory.
• Make and Break words from the rhymes. Use words such as Jill/hill, down/crown. Use the onsets and rimes to build new words (spill, fill, mill, bill).
• You can have your children illustrate several Nursery Rhymes and bind them into a book. Those illustrations are a great way to teach visualization, and they help you see if your child comprehends the text.
• Teens can research the political and historical significance to each of the rhymes. Then they can write their own Nursery Rhymes that have political and historical messages cleverly hidden in them.

Fables

Fables are short stories that have a moral or a lesson at the end.

• Since fables are so short, you can use them to practice oral reading. Have your children read them aloud with the goal of making the reading “sound like talking”.
• You can focus on memorization skills with Fables. Choose shorter ones that your older children can memorize and have the younger children memorize the moral.
• The lesson can spark an interesting discussion about morals. Ask your children what they think is the right choice in each situation.
• Fables can help you gauge your children’s comprehension because they are short and have a moral. Did your child predict the outcome based on the clues in the text? Did your child make connections to other stories or situations?

Look for more posts about using folklore in your homeschool.

Success for the Beginning Reader in Your Homeschool

Photo by pingu1963

Has your child just started to read in your homeschool? Here are a few tips for the beginning reader.

~Have your child practice rereading that first book as much as possible. Start an autograph book for anyone who listens to your child read. Doing this builds excitement for reading since everyone will affirm your child’s efforts.

~Record yourself reading the book, and have your child follow along with that recording pointing to the words. This adds more opportunities to practice independently.

~Remind your child to point to each word while reading. This helps beginning readers to read the words instead of saying the words from memory.

~Create flashcards with the words in the book. Make doubles so you can play “concentration” and “go fish”. This allows your child to practice reading these words in a playful way.

~Cue your child to use different strategies if s/he gets stuck. For example, use the picture clues to figure out tricky words. This allows your child to word solve independently and builds confidence.

~Remind your child to look at all of the letters in the word. Sometimes beginning readers guess the word based on the first letter or two.

~Have fun with your child and be positive!

Provide many opportunities for your child to be successful with reading because that will help your child to learn to love reading in the end.

Rehearsal Learning

Photo by Alan Light

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.

Review, Review, Review

Practice makes progress, right? Practice can be boring, though. However, review is essential to make sure that your children are retaining what they are learning. How do you review? Here are a few ideas to spice up the review that you know you need to do.

Try keeping instructional items around for a while after you have finished using them. We studied Noah’s ark a while ago, but we still use the puzzle and toys related to the story. I have projects that the kids made that they still use. There are games from other units that we still play with. Keeping those things around feeds imaginative play and gives the children the opportunity to really own the concepts they learned. Additionally, it helps you to make on-the-spot observations and corrections to misconceptions.

More active review is also important. Trivia games are a great way to review and add a level of excitement. You could really play it up and turn it into a whole game show with prizes. Other games including “Go Fish” and “Concentration” also make review more interesting. Make your own set of cards for this game. For example, for a vocabulary review game, one card would have the vocabulary word and the other card would have the definition on it.

Have the kids be the teacher. This is a great opportunity to have the kids practice their public speaking skills, too. You and other children pretend that you know nothing about the topic. Then the “teacher” has to explain the topic very clearly to the group. Then the group can use a scoring guide to evaluate the performance of the “teacher”. You can make it like American Idol even to make it more interesting for older kids. Take the “teacher” idea one step farther and have each child create a paper and pencil test for the material being reviewed. The test must be high-quality, and there must be an answer sheet included.

Try something new to make your review more intersting and engaging.

Home School Handwriting without Worksheets

The beauty of home education is flexibility. You are free to try different teaching strategies to meet your children’s particular learning needs. I prefer to limit worksheets. They do have a place, and we do use them, but I want to engage my children in more active learning that is fun. It is also hard to motivate me and the kids to do repetitive practice that can be very boring. If you have an unmotivated, kinesthetic, or tactile learner, it can be particularly difficult to get him/her to do all of the practice that will help achieve mastery of skills.

This summer we have been practicing  handwriting and have tried to practice without using worksheets. These strategies are quite useful and fun. Most of these ideas are great for unmotivated, kinesthetic, and tactile learners.

• Use several pieces of string to form a letter. Trace over the string as you say the name of the letter. Sometimes I talk about the direction that your finger goes as we are moving along the letter. You could do the same thing with spelling.
• We use tub crayons to write all of the letters that we know. We write both capital and lower case letters. We try writing the letters in different colors and sizes.
• We form letters with play dough. All of the rolling, smoothing, a movement helps my kinesthetic and tacticle kids stay engaged in the work. (Try making numbers, too.)
• Write letters in the sandbox using your finger or a stick. It is less intimidating because you can easily smooth the sand if you make a mistake. This is a great strategy for kids who are perfectionists.
• We have a “magic wand” to write letters in the sky. Ours is filled with colorful sand and sparkly stars that float in some liquid. I think that watching the floating things is good for developing eye tracking skills and adds visual interest. Any kind of pointer that looks magical and fancy will do, though. Girls in particular like the magic wand.
• Finger paint is another way of getting tactile learners involved in handwriting. You can mix colors and make the letters any size you like. It also works for the artist in your family.
• We use sidewalk chalk for handwriting practice. If you are like me and can’t find a place for all of the practice the kids do, the rain washes away the work. I think that the resistance also helps build certain muscles.
• Make the shape of a letter with your body. It highlights all of the parts of the letter so on paper the kids include all of the parts. This is particularly good for kinesthetic learners.
• We have a foam alphabet floor puzzle that has different textures on it. We trace those letters while laying on the puzzle. This position also helps build arm muscles and helps with motor control. The colors and the textures add interest and helps the kids remember the work.

Have fun with handwriting!