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The Holidays Are Unit Studies — Learning During the Busy Season

December 2, 2008 by Leave a Comment

[This article was written by Jennifer (Morrison) Leonhard: Guilt-Free daughter and homeschool graduate.]

The holidays are a hectic time: relatives are coming over, the house needs to be cleaned, presents must be bought and wrapped, and food must be prepared. The schoolwork either gets lost along the way or becomes an added frustration as we try to get everything done at once. Mom planned our school schedule with the knowledge that Dad would be home from work around this time and regular schoolwork wouldn’t get done, but the learning was just beginning.

Mom usually gave us a break from lessons during the entire week of Thanksgiving, and we often stopped our official schoolwork well before Christmas, since extra time before each holiday was more beneficial for Mom’s preparations than time off afterward. However, we found many opportunities for learning, even when the schoolbooks had been put back on the shelf.

Shop Class
Dad usually did some project around the house during his time off from work (after all, you can’t get Dad to just sit around the house doing nothing). We learned to fix cracks in walls, paint, and generally drive Mom crazy with home repairs, all while she was preparing to have people over. Creating homemade presents, like building blocks, picture frames, and ornaments, teach handcrafts while theoretically cutting down on the expenses for gifts.

Math
Mom has always used cooking as math. Make a recipe smaller or larger, and you are automatically learning fractions: 3/4 cup of flour times 2 equals 1 1/2 cups. (Sure you could just use the 3/4 cup twice, but then what are you learning?) The economics of having a budget for Christmas will never fail to provide an opportunity for learning. How about learning some geometry and spatial relationships when wrapping presents? A lesson in possibility vs. impossibility lurks in the concept of a jolly and fat Santa squeezing down a chimney (which also brings up the lesson of “don’t try this at home”) or reindeer in flight (although one can argue that bees are also supposed to be a flight impossibility, and yet they consistently defy logical aerodynamics).

Music
Obviously, Christmas includes music — but that can take on many different forms. You can find many genres of Christmas music, from a symphony orchestra to the sounds of animals barking and mewing Away in a Manger. The latter is rather amusing the first time, but it gets harder to appreciate with frequency. The library and your friends will likely have a variety of holiday music that you can sample. I found a simple song book and learned how to tap out a few tunes on the piano. I knew what Christmas songs were supposed to sound like, so they were easier to learn, and I got a small taste of playing the piano. Explore the lyrics of Christmas songs to learn a little about Christmas history — have you ever wondered why the lyrics to I’ll Be Home for Christmas talk about presents on the tree?

History
Beyond the lyrics of songs giving us a glimpse into Christmas Past, there are many other subjects you can study for history. Thanksgiving is a history lesson in itself, from the voyage of the Pilgrims to learning why we celebrate it in November. American history becomes an interesting pastime instead of boring history when reading a Pilgrim’s personal account of coming to this country. Do you know why we celebrate Christmas around a tree? Or who started the tradition of sending Christmas cards? Do you know how the first Christmas trees were decorated — or the stories behind your family’s favorite decorations?

Literature
From studying Christmases past to reading about the Ghost of Christmas Past, ample literature can be found about others celebrating Christmas. In the spirit of the season, reading holiday stories aloud by a fire while drinking hot cocoa certainly doesn’t feel much like schoolwork!

Spelling
The holidays can provide much inspiration for spelling, from Old World words in songs to sitting around after dinner, playing Scrabble with friends and family. Reindeer pulling a sleigh will provide you with more exceptions to the rule “I before E, except after C.”

Language, Geography & Social Studies
Research the different names for Santa Claus around the world. (And for math, estimate the number of stops he must make in a single night.) Various traditions surround Santa’s visit, from cookies and milk to leaving shoes instead of stockings to be filled. And don’t overlook the traditions of Hanukkah: many interesting studies reside in the holiday celebrations from other cultures.

Cooking
Besides being recruited to help Mom with preparations for large family dinners (and vying for turns at grinding the fruits for our traditional cranberry relish), we often made a variety of cookies and candies to have available during the season. Occasionally, we also made an assortment of mini-casseroles and other freezer meals as gifts for elderly grandparents. Perhaps you could experience popular foods from holiday celebrations in the past — and who doesn’t enjoy a chance to try yummy new foods? You may end up adding a new favorite to the season, or (if you don’t like the new dish) you can at least learn to be more thankful for the old standards your family regularly prepares for holidays.

Many more lessons can be found in the holiday seasons — just make sure to keep your eyes open for learning opportunities and your heart open to the most important lesson of all: being thankful for the Son.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Family Unity, Homeschool How-To's, Homeschooling as a Lifestyle, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning

Preschoolers’ Educational School-Time Activities

September 4, 2008 by Leave a Comment

How much trouble can a bored preschooler get into while you are trying to help your older children with their lessons? Don’t answer that. Instead, let’s just focus on providing your preschooler with some fun activities as his own version of “schoolwork.”

Preschoolers can begin to learn school-time skills with a few simple projects of their own. Try some of these activities by setting up your preschooler with his own individual work area, just as though he were another “real” student, but your space allowances will determine whether your preschooler is seated near his siblings or in his own special location with plenty of elbow room. If it is possible to group your children together in the same area, your preschooler can begin to observe how his siblings sit and work independently, so that he can learn to duplicate their actions. Not every preschooler will be eager to sit still and “play” school for long periods, but for those who are determined to mimic their older siblings, these suggestions offer safe, semi-supervised activities that will develop essential skills. Activities can be changed periodically, just as your older students change subjects throughout the day. These projects can work to lengthen a short attention span, as well as keep your little one occupied in fascinating, educational activities while you explain a lesson concept or demonstrate a few math problems to your older students.

You will probably need to work back and forth, setting up the preschooler with his activity, then starting the older children on their lessons, checking back on the preschooler, following up with the olders, and repeating the cycle as often as needed. Yes, at first you will feel as busy as the old-time plate juggler who balanced spinning plates on tall sticks placed around a table, running and spinning and running and spinning and running to catch the far one just before it falls, but your diligence will quickly pay off with rewards of students who can work independently for a few minutes until Mom is available for help.

The following is a list of materials and activities to help keep your preschooler occupied and give him a boost in the learning department, beyond the usual board books and wooden puzzles. Whether these activities look educational or not, they do include getting-ready-for-learning skills, often disguised as creative fun. Reserving these materials (especially the scissors and glue sticks) and activities for use only during school-time or at the school table will help reinforce the idea of schoolwork in your preschooler’s mind and help him become accustomed to your family’s homeschooling routine. If the “fun” activities can only be done during school, it helps to plant the idea that learning is fun — plus it keeps those activities from becoming boring. Many other activities and playthings also have educational benefits, so please extend this list with your own activities and variations to fit your child’s interests and skill level. Be sure to swap ideas with your friends, no matter what the ages of the children, because ideas can be adapted to suit any age level.

“Sample” Notebooks
Materials: an assortment of old magazines, newspapers, greeting cards, sales ads, junk mail, etc.; spiral notebooks and glue stick, or magnetic photo album/pages. Store these in a specific box for the preschooler’s use, to prevent him from cutting up your newest magazines, unpaid bills, and expensive set of leather-bound first edition books.
Method:Let your child find and cut out pictures, letters, or numbers that fit certain criteria:

  • Objects matching a specific color (use basic colors to allow for variations in shading);
  • Objects starting with a certain letter of the alphabet;
  • Letters and/or numbers in a variety of fonts/typefaces.

Use each of the above groups to create individual “sample” notebooks, making 1-2 pages for each category: color recognition (separate pages for red, yellow, etc), letter-symbol recognition (separate pages for a/A, b/B, etc), letter-sound recognition (separate pages for things that begin with “a,” “b,” etc), number-symbol recognition (separate pages for each numeral, 0-9 or higher, if desired), number-value recognition (groups of 2 items for “2’s,” groups of 3 items for “3’s,” etc.), etc. (Recognition of the letter or number symbols is important because the variations in fonts and typefaces can be quite confusing to beginning readers.)

Keep the child busy looking and searching on his own for the needed samples and let him do the cutting, so that this activity lasts more than a few seconds. Samples can be glued into an old spiral notebook with a glue-stick or put into an old photo album or 3-ring binder with “magnetic” photo pages for minimal mess. The notebooks can also be “studied” for help in recognizing colors, letters, etc. Occasional supervision may be necessary to help the beginner understand the placement of the samples. A younger child may just enjoy cutting/gluing random pictures into a notebook without any specific categories. Pictures can also be arranged so as to tell a wordless story: This little girl went to this house to visit her grandmother…
Skills Developed: visual recognition, cutting with scissors, glue-stick, fine motor skills
Mess Alert: paper scraps from cutting; glue-stick residue

Tangram Pictures & Patterns
Materials: felt pieces, flat craft foam shapes, colored paper or card stock pieces (cut into circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, parallelograms, etc.)
Method: free play; challenge student to duplicate patterns; challenge student to keep enlarging designs
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pattern recognition
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Stringing Beads
Materials: wooden, plastic, or craft foam beads; empty thread spools; leather boot laces, shoestrings, or plastic laces
Method: Tip of shoelaces can be stiffened by wrapping with masking tape to form a child-safe “needle” about 3″ long. Free play, or challenge student to duplicate patterns.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pattern recognition
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Sewing/Lacing Cards
Materials: cardboard or poster board shapes with holes punched close to the edges; plastic canvas; yarn, heavy string, shoelaces, or plastic laces
Method: Sew through the holes to outline the shape or loop around the edges. (See above for creating a safe “needle” with masking tape) Plastic canvas can be “stitched” randomly or into any pattern desired; it can be cut into shapes or used as squares or rectangles (circles can also be found in most craft stores). Blunt yarn needles (metal or plastic) can also be found in craft stores, if desired.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills
Mess Alert: strings to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Building Blocks
Materials: Cuisenaire rods, building blocks, etc. (may be interlocking or non-interlocking)
Method: free play; building/stacking; pattern matching (include paper patterns to reproduce with blocks); counting, matching, & sorting. Simple patterns may be drawn as a guide for the child to reproduce over and over: red/red/blue or square/rectangle/triangle, etc.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pattern recognition, basic math awareness
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Buttons
Materials: jar or box of assorted clothing buttons
Method: free play; sorting, matching, & counting
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, basic math awarenes
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Wikki Stix
Materials: Wikki Stix (like chenille sticks, but made of wax)
Method: free play; pattern duplication; shaping into letters or numbers
Wikki Stix may be stuck to windows, table tops, paper, or stuck to each other for 3-D creations.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pattern recognition, creativity
Mess Alert: may leave slight waxy residue on surfaces, depending on brand used

Cutting Practice
Materials: child-safe scissors, construction paper or newspapers (Again, have a designated supply of papers for the child to use, avoiding accidental cutting of valuable materials.)
Method: Let child practice cutting photos or ads from newspapers, cutting along lines, etc.
Let child practice cutting by reducing construction paper to bits! Leftover scraps of paper, torn sheets, or less-pretty colors may be used up in this manner, giving valuable practice in scissor skills.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, cutting with scissors
Mess Alert: paper scraps

Handwriting Practice
Materials: newspapers, junk mail (Again, have a designated supply of papers for the child to use, avoiding accidental drawing on valuable materials.)
Method: Let child practice handwriting by tracing lines inside the thick lines of headlines and large font letters and numbers. The child may also like to copy letters or entire words onto blank sheets of paper or wide-lined paper.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pre-handwriting basics
Mess Alert: paper scraps; marks from pencils or other writing implements

Activity Jar
Materials: Activity Jar full of assorted items
Method: (see this article for details)
Skills Developed: sorting, matching, counting, fine motor skills
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (children can easily help toss pieces back into the large container). Pieces may be poured out onto a cookie sheet or cake pan to minimize scattering.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Preschoolers, Role-Modeling, Sibling Relationships, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning

Felt Shapes

July 18, 2008 by 1 Comment

Do you need a new idea for keeping the kiddies occupied indoors when it’s too hot to play outside? Are you looking for a “down time” activity? Have you had it with the constant noise of TV and kids and more TV? Here is something that will occupy their minds as well as their hands, stir their imaginations, and give your ears a few moments of blissful solace: a box of felt pieces.

This was a favorite activity for my tactile child. It makes a great “lap toy” for quiet time. I started with some leftover pieces of craft felt, cutting them into geometric shapes and random shapes. A piece of flannel fabric (approx. 18″ x 24″) served as a background and could be spread over a sofa cushion, the carpeted floor, or a bed pillow, then folded up easily to fit into the storage box when playtime was done. [Hint: cut up an old flannel shirt, nightgown, or pillow case.] I used felt in bright colors, pastels, neutral colors, and black and white for squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, and ovals in a wide range of sizes. [Note: thin sheets of craft foam can be used, but the foam pieces tend to jump or cling from static electricity, and they lack the softer flexibility of the felt cloth.] The child makes “pictures” and patterns with the felt shapes on the flannel, stacking or layering pieces as desired. Smoothing the pieces in place provides an important tactile connection for a touch-feely child.

It works best to keep the smallest pieces larger than a coin — anything smaller will be difficult to cut. The largest pieces do not need to be bigger than your hand, since larger pieces will be more difficult to store flat. (An older child may enjoy cutting the pieces for younger siblings to play with, but remember the size limitations.) If you are feeling especially creative, add some half-circles, crescents, teardrop/petal shapes, stylized leaf shapes, and a few 4″-10″ strands of yarn (useful for flower stems, kite strings, and other necessary lines). Pinking shears can add variety to some pieces, but will be difficult to use on smaller pieces; the shears must also be quite sharp to produce a good zigzag edge. (Optional: applying iron-on interfacing will stiffen the felt, making cutting easier and the pieces more durable.)

Remember that this project will be a plaything, so your shapes do not have to be exactly measured or accurately cut. Keep it simple: free-hand cutting is adequate. Circles do not have to be perfectly round, and squares, rectangles, and triangles do not need perfectly straight sides or precise corners. Your child’s imagination will be broadened through playing with the felt shapes, and imagination is a great substitute for precision.

Quick trick for cutting triangles: cut squares or rectangles in two diagonally.
Quick trick for cutting petal shapes: cut a rectangle in two diagonally, making two long triangles, and round off the short end opposite the long pointy tip, producing the stylized silhouette of a single-scoop ice cream cone.
Quick trick for cutting leaves: round opposite corners of a square or rectangle, leaving the uncut corners as the pointy ends of the leaf.

Don’t feel that you need to make shapes that look like real objects. Your child’s imagination will take over, transforming those simple rectangles, circles, and triangles into wonderful things. A child who has always relied on printed coloring pages for “art class” may need some time and a little help to activate his imagination, stop depending on literal representations, and begin developing creative thinking skills.

Store the pieces as flat as possible in a box large enough to make clean-up easy for the child, and a container with a tight-fitting or locking lid will prevent accidental spillage. Any pieces that are wrinkled or folded when put away will be wrinkled and folded at the next playtime, so try to smooth each piece out as flat as possible. (The tactile child will actually enjoy this step.) Badly wrinkled pieces can easily be ironed flat again.

A solid felt board or “flannel-graph” can be made by covering heavy cardboard or a bulletin board with a large piece of felt or flannel fabric. The board requires more storage space than just a loose piece of cloth, but the board can be useful for illustrating lesson concepts to more than one child at a time by propping it up where all can see it at once. A small strip of felt on the back of paper pictures will make them cling to the fuzzy board — the entire back surface of the picture does not need to be covered. Sandpaper can also be used as a backing by cutting thin strips of fine sandpaper (1/2″ wide by 1″ or 2″ long) and gluing the strips to the backs of cardstock pictures or word/number cards. Large cards may need wider or larger pieces of rougher sandpaper to help support their weight. All sorts of visual aids for lessons can be used with flannel boards. Christian bookstores usually carry Sunday School lesson materials for felt boards, including great pictures of Bible heroes or generic pictures of children and families.

Ideas for Lessons:
Sorting — Can you sort pieces by color? By shape? By size?
Counting — How many of each color/shape/size?
Matching — Can you find a piece that is the same color/shape/size as this one?
Patterns — Circle, circle, square… can you make a pattern that matches this one?
Sequencing — Red, red, blue, red, red… what comes next?
Explaining Processes (using flannel-graph letters or cards)– To make the word kitty work for two kitties, we change this y to an i and add es.
Phonics & Spelling — C-a-t, b-a-t, r-a-t… can you make more words that end with -at?
Reading — Put these word cards together to make a sentence.
Fractions — Is this rectangle divided into halves or fourths? (Use several squares in the same size to form rectangles.)
Arithmetic — How many ways can you group these pieces? (Use matching sizes & shapes to teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, perimeter, and area. Ratios and percentages can be illustrated with a mix of colors, sizes, or shapes: 3 red squares and 1 blue square = 3/4 red and 1/4 blue, or 75% red and 25% blue.)

Felt shapes and felt-backed pictures can be used for just about anything you can think of. Let your creativity take over as you adapt the felt pieces and pictures to whatever lesson you are working on, and watch more applications come to mind the longer you use them. Whether you use this as an educational tool or a quiet-time toy, the learning possibilities will be unlimited!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Learning Styles, Math, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning

Math Awareness: Tactile Counting

June 3, 2008 by Leave a Comment

An interesting idea occurred to me when we were driving home late a few nights ago. My throat was dry, so I pulled a box of Tic-Tacs out of my purse, shook some pieces into my hand (without turning on a light), and popped them into my mouth. As I rolled the candies around with my tongue, I began trying to count them to see just how many there were. The box that usually releases only one or two pieces with a good shake had instead given me a mouthful in the dark. One, two. One, two, three, four. No. One, two, three… One… two… three… four… FIVE? Yes, Five. A number that would have been very simple to identify with my eyes in a lighted situation was suddenly very difficult to count with just my tongue!

That experience set my mind to working overtime. How simple is it to count objects that I can see? How much more difficult is it to count objects that I can NOT see? The whole idea of blind counting made me consider the possibilities of math as a tactile experience. I have often carried coins in my jeans pocket and had to pull out a handful and look at them to select just one or two. If I was more adept at tactile identification, perhaps I could pull out only the coins I needed!

So here is my challenge for the day: experiment with tactile counting. I recommend trying it with fingers first, not letting your young children pop random objects into their mouths — although that can be an interesting lesson for more advanced students (who are less likely to swallow). Expanding the awareness of number values to tactile skills and not just visual skills will allow the student to count quickly and easily by touch, even when seeing the objects in question is difficult or impossible.

I tested my own tactile counting skills by spreading a towel on the table, folded in half, with the fold farthest away from me. Then I closed my eyes and grabbed a large handful of goodies from my Activity Jar and inserted the objects between the layers of the towel. (The towel kept balls, marbles, and other small, round objects from rolling away.) Carefully keeping the upper layer of the towel in place to conceal the objects, I slipped my hands underneath it and began feeling the hidden treasures. To my surprise, there were a lot of things inside my towel — many more objects than I expected to find.

I eventually pulled one hand out and began writing notes of what I had found, so I could record how many buttons and how many game tokens were included in this cache. I wrote down each basic category of items and used tally marks for the duplicates. When I was satisfied that I had sorted and counted everything successfully, I opened up the towel to check my accuracy. Oops. Close, but not perfect! I had miscounted the buttons: 14, instead of 15; but I had correctly identified five different types of game tokens: large, small, ridged, smooth, and cardboard (not plastic like the others). I had also correctly identified a coin as feeling different from the plastic game chips and accurately concluded (by touch only) that the coin was a penny, not a nickel or dime.

This was such a fascinating challenge that I repeated it several more times! Once, I purposely sorted out a large group of flat game tokens from my Activity Jar, some smooth and some with ridged edges. Placing those inside the towel, I attempted to sort them into two piles and count how many were in each pile. I accurately counted the ridged tokens, but I was off by two when I counted the smooth chips. My conclusion was that the thin, smooth chips could slip out of my hands unnoticed much more easily than the ridged chips could.

How about some other variations of this tactile math challenge?

  • Blindfolded; count objects with your fingers
  • Blindfolded; feel and count objects in a box on the floor with your toes
  • Use several sizes of the same shape, such as a variety of coins
  • Use a variety of shapes and sizes of different objects, such as buttons
  • Count behind your back, feeling objects placed into your hands by a helper
  • Feel objects placed inside a sack, box, or pillowcase (so you can’t see them)
  • For older or advanced students: tiny, hard candies in the mouth to count with the tongue. Tic-Tacs work well, since they are quite small and don’t melt quickly.

The variations using toes or tongue develop tactile skills beyond the usual finger skills. Even a student who can quickly count or identify with finger-touches will find it a challenge to repeat the assignment with toes. I suggest starting with fewer than ten objects for toe-counting and using 3-dimensional objects, not flat items like coins.

For tongue-counting, be sure the student is not likely to choke or swallow the candies, and start with fewer than five small pieces. Keeping the head tilted forward can also prevent accidentally swallowing the candies. I cannot recommend putting non-edible objects in the mouth, nor do I suggest using anything larger than a plain M&M candy. Hard candies work better for this experiment than do soft, chewable candies. Tic-Tac candies are ideal: small and solid.

One more variation would be to turn this into an auditory activity by counting sounds. Conceal your hands behind a large book or similar partition and tap quickly several times, while your student attempts to count how many taps he hears. A more complex version would involve listening to music and counting notes, beats, or instruments heard. Take this activity outdoors and listen for vehicles, horns, or bird songs.

Math is primarily a visual task, but stretching our abilities and learning to sort and count with our other senses will bring the benefits of increased skills and a related increase in thinking power. And just imagine the fun of impressing your friends with your ability to count the change in your pocket without looking!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Learning Styles, Math, Tactile Learning

Top 10 Dress-up Items

February 19, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Kids love costumes. Dressing up in fanciful attire does something to spark a child’s imagination. Turn your children loose with a boxful of dress-up items, and they will be busy for hours, dressing up, imagining, changing, playing, wondering, and becoming many different characters.

When I was a little girl, my family had a large box of dress-up clothes. I remember playing with them for hours and hours. My favorite Halloween costumes either came out of this box or were added to it after the treats were gone. Specialty items were gathered and quickly tucked into the box. Fanciful costumes created for school plays also went into the box once the performances were over.

Many years later, I created a dress-up box for my own children. They spent many afternoons trying on everything in the box, sharing the costumes with friends during play days, making up skits to fit their costumes, and doing it all over and over again. Some days they dressed up as elegant ladies and gentlemen and held fancy “tea” parties; other days they strived for the goofiest costumes possible and convulsed with laughter and delight.

As dress-up quickly became one of my children’s favorite activities, I began searching for specific items to round out their collection. I cleaned out closets and shopped thrift stores and yard sales for wonderful items: a faded prom dress had been discarded in a yard sale “free” box, and my daughter played with it for years afterward. Here are some basic categories of dress-up goodies to help you get started on your own fanciful fashion collection.

1. Hats. Ladies’ hats; men’s hats; silly, Dr. Seuss-style stocking caps; construction hard-hat; sailor hat; baseball caps; cowboy hats; berets; English-style driving caps; plastic crowns and tiaras; any type of specialty headwear you can find! We had extra boxes just for hats to keep the fancier ones from being crushed.

2. Skirts and Dresses. Elastic-waist skirts, with the elastic made tight enough to fit small kiddies. Full, twirly skirts are best! Dresses are wonderful, especially an old prom dress or bridesmaid’s dress with lace, sparkles, and/or layers of ruffles. My mom sewed spaghetti straps onto a formerly-strapless 1950’s prom dress so that it could hang from my ultra-thin childhood frame. She also made me a “Miss America” banner (which I still have to this day) when I entered the 2nd grade costume carnival in my beautiful gown. It didn’t matter to me that some of the canary-yellow lace ruffles were torn or that the gown was woefully out of style–I loved it and felt very special when I was wearing it. It was originally designed as mid-calf in length, but it dragged on the floor when worn by a 7-year-old, making me feel beautiful and elegant in my tattered, hand-me-down gown.

3. Vests. Dark colors or leather vests work just right for playing cowboys or sheriff. Add a necktie for a businessman’s look. (Keep the knot tied, and just loosen it to slip over the child’s head. For safety with very small children, hand-stitch the knot in place, then cut the tie at the back of the neck and sew in a section of elastic.)

4. Suit Coat or Blazer. Don’t forget that boys like to play dress-up, too! And both boys and girls have fun dressing up as Mommy and Daddy.

5. Gloves. Any colors, all lengths–children love gloves. I snagged opera-length gloves in bright turquoise and short brown gloves trimmed in shiny gold glass beads at a yard sale for 25 cents per pair.

6. Costume Jewelry. Ear clips, bangle bracelets, long strings of beads–the gaudier, the better. Old eyeglass frames (lenses removed) and sunglasses fall into this category as well. You may want another box just to hold the junky jewelry!

7. Shoes. I combed dozens of yard sales before I found the ultimate treasure: women’s black suede pumps in a petite size 5 (for only $1)–the perfect size for a small child to clomp around in. We also had a pair of lace-up shoes large enough that my youngsters could put their foot (shoe and all) inside them for clown shoes they could actually walk in!

8. Furs. Fake furs are best for wash-ability after tea party accidents. We had stoles, wraps, and hats. (Real furs can be quite heavy, especially if the garment is very large and the child is very small. Real furs also attract insects to your dress-up closet!)

9. Scarves. The larger, the better–a really large scarf can double as a superhero’s cape, a princess’s train, an elegant shoulder wrap, an apron, a doll blanket, etc. Include remnants of lace (even a discarded lace tablecloth or lace curtain panel) for veils or wedding dress trains. Remember to include bandanas for your cowboys.

10. Props. Plastic swords, holsters and six-guns, purses and tote bags, a sheriff’s badge, artificial flower corsages, aprons, suspenders, tool belts or carpenter’s nail aprons, etc. Bring out the toy dishes for the tea parties, the toy doctor’s kit and old elastic bandages, and the play tools and an afternoon of make-believe will be unstoppable.

We tossed everything into a huge cardboard carton, large enough that the children could clean up after themselves easily. The size of your storage box is important: it should easily hold everything when tossed in carelessly. Folding the garments as they are put away will result in better looking costumes at the next play session, but diligence sometimes gives way to speed in clean-up. From time to time, I went through the items as we cleaned up and sorted out things which needed laundering, mending, or disposal.

A full-length mirror is another valuable item–the children will love seeing their creative couture, and the resulting giggles will fill your home with the sounds of happiness. Be prepared for costume parades, spontaneous dramatizations, and strange looks from the neighbors if your children venture outdoors in their finery. One mom even asked me how we created a hoop skirt, and she praised our ingenuity: several sizes of hula hoops suspended with string from a belt worn underneath the full-skirted dress.

My children are now grown, but they still cherish their favorite costume pieces and manage to find uses for them year after year. They also find new items now and then that they want to save for their future children’s dress-up collections! Dress-up and make-believe are excellent ways to ignite a child’s imagination, stimulate creative thinking, and reward Mom with a bit of free time while the kiddies entertain themselves.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Preschoolers, Top 10 (and other) Lists

The Activity Jar

January 31, 2008 by Leave a Comment

**UPDATED** — See the photo link at the bottom of this article.

Homeschooling parents often lament that they lack the educational gadgets and fancy learning aids that students can benefit from in “real” school classrooms. The Activity Jar is a wonderful store of math manipulatives and assorted learning aids that you can assemble yourself from no-cost items readily available in your home. Gathering the items and filling the jar is as much fun as dumping the contents out again and playing with them.

How to Assemble an Activity Jar–
Begin with one rather large, wide-mouthed container, such as a gallon jar (unbreakable plastic, if possible). Use a small storage tub or cardboard box if you wish, but a secure lid is a must and see-through sides are a bonus. Now set out on a scavenger hunt through your home and garage, poking through the “junk” drawers and all of those little nooks and crannies that tend to collect odds and ends. Pick up those interesting bits of stuff and place them into your jar. Continue this process until you have unearthed all possible objects or until your container is approximately 75% full. Do not give in to the impulse to fill your container brim-full, or you will seriously impede the clean-up phase of using the Activity Jar. Close the lid and set the container aside for a rainy day or any other time when your children want something to do or need practice in sorting, categorizing, or math in general. Bear in mind that the jar will be shaken and rattled around often, so you may need to remove any objects from the jar that become broken with use and replace them with more objects as you find them to keep the Activity Jar’s contents new and interesting.

Be creative with what you select, thinking “outside the box” and including items from all areas of your home, not exclusively small toys. Do include tiny toys, coins, buttons, paper clips, nuts and bolts, and any other fascinating flotsam and jetsam. This is a great opportunity to recycle the remnants from incomplete, broken, or discarded board games. Be careful to select only larger pieces if toddlers may be at risk for swallowing the objects.

How to Use the Activity Jar–
Pour the contents into a large cake pan, unless your children can easily reach into the container to remove the items. Caution: unless your children are already skilled in sharing and showing patience, you will want to limit the Activity Jar to one student at a time. The discovery process can foster territorial feelings and selfishness, especially if two students are attempting to divide the contents without supervision or guidance. Encouraging your students to work together as a team toward a common goal can help them to overcome competition and rivalry.

Allow a student to begin with periods of free play with the objects, and watch him begin sorting without being prompted. When the student has exhausted his own ideas, challenge him to begin sorting the contents into 3 basic categories: Category A (such as round), Category B (such as not round), and Category C (for Other, or I’m not sure what to call this one, because one side of it is A and the other side is B). Other possible basic categories (for A & B) are flat objects and fat objects, single-colored objects and multi-colored objects, buttons and not buttons. Category C is always useful for speeding up the process, since there will usually be something that does not fall easily into the two main categories. Use more cake pans, cookie sheets, shoe boxes, freezer containers, bowls, muffin pans, egg cartons, paper cups, or any containers that will make the sorting process simple and easy.

Once Categories A and B have been sorted out, choose one of them and set the other objects aside for now. Further divide this selection of objects into more specific categories. Sort single-colored objects into individual color families; sort round or flat objects into disk-shaped objects and non-disk shapes; or sort the objects into general size categories of small, medium, and large before measuring them for more accurate classifications. Again, it may help your child to have an “Other” category for things that are difficult to categorize into his chosen groupings.

Preschoolers can enjoy digging through the contents of an Activity Jar (filled with toddler-safe objects) while Mom is helping their older siblings with lessons. Provide them with several empty plastic bowls or freezer containers, and they will have fun sorting and moving objects from here to there and back again.

How to Learn from the Activity Jar–
Sorting and categorizing are the most basic skills that can be learned. Since the jar contains a variety of objects, the student must make decisions for which category applies to each object. Begin with very basic categories (as described above) and proceed to more complicated descriptions later, as the student’s abilities advance. The more the student sorts and categorizes, the finer the details become that can be used for sorting as categories are divided and sub-divided into smaller and smaller groupings.

Even the youngest student can perform simple sorting tasks. Vocabulary and recognition skills are increased as preschoolers practice sorting to learn shapes: Let’s find all of the round things. Color names can be even easier to demonstrate with the jar’s goodies: Today, let’s find all of the blue things. Now let’s make another group of things that have some blue on them.

Students quickly learn that each object can be classified in numerous ways: a single button may be round, flat, pink, have a certain number of holes through its middle, and be an object that starts with the letter “B” or a color that starts with the letter “P.” It may have a design of squares on its top, and it may be made of wood. The student will expand his abstract thinking skills as he learns to look at each object in numerous ways and learns to see all of the various attributes of any given item. Sorting these same objects over and over (by colors, by shapes, by materials, etc.) will illustrate to your child how common objects can be anything but common.

As skill levels advance, so can the sorting criteria, as well as the mathematical applications. Students of all ages will benefit from practice in sorting and counting, resorting and recounting, but other skills can be improved as well: comparing, judging, and classifying; the basic arithmetic of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing; illustrating fractions and percentages; taking measurements; and on and on.

Once your student has divided and sub-divided objects into satisfactory groupings, challenge him to count the total number of objects and count the number of objects in each sub-group. A student who can perform long division can calculate each smaller group as a percentage of the larger group. If the concept of percent is difficult for the student to grasp, try the exercise again, but this time limit the large group to exactly 100 objects, then repeat the sorting, counting, and arithmetic portions. After the student understands percentages of 100, he can try again with a different (larger or smaller) number of objects as the larger grouping. Fractions can also be illustrated with sub-groups: one student has sorted out 12 game tokens, 6 of which are red; therefore, one-half of the tokens are red. Notice that 2 of those red tokens have a pattern of ridges on them, representing one-third of the red tokens and one-sixth of the larger group of 12 tokens.

Algebra uses the concept of sorting with polynomials. An algebraic expression may contain many objects to sort and categorize, but instead of being red buttons and blue buttons, pennies and nickels, and yellow and white game tokens, they look like X and 2X, XY and 3XY, and 4Y and 2Y. A student who understands that buttons are buttons and that coins are not buttons can also understand that X and 2X are both X-objects, and that neither of them are XY-objects or Y-objects. That is the basis of algebra: sorting and grouping similar objects, while not grouping dissimilar objects.

The skills to be gained from an Activity Jar are nearly limitless. Classification is the basis of scientific research, sorting useful facts from insignificant facts. The plant and animal kingdoms are carefully sorted and classified into similar groups. Other applications of the Activity Jar cover many academic subjects. The visually-oriented student might make graphs and charts to show how many objects were sorted into each group or compile lists of attributes (color, size, shape, material, etc.) for some items. The tactile student might experiment with stacking objects to see which types of shapes can and cannot be stacked easily. You can spur your students’ creativity by them to invent a game using some of the objects. Sharpen your students’ tactile and memory skills by placing some objects inside a paper sack, then asking each student to reach into the sack and try to identify the objects by touch alone. To improve auditory skills, secretly place an object inside a box and challenge your students to listen closely as each one shakes and tips the box to see if he can determine what type of object is inside, just from the sounds it makes while sliding back and forth.

The more activities your students do with the Activity Jar, the more ideas you and your students will think of for new activities to try. Your applications for the Activity Jar will probably go far beyond the few simple projects that I have described here, making your jar one of the most valuable learning aids in your homeschool. And you thought this was just a jar full of useless junk.

Photos of my Activity Jar and some examples of sorting activities can be viewed HERE.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Learning Styles, Math, Preschoolers, Science, Tactile Learning

10 Ways to Ease into Homeschooling

August 16, 2007 by 4 Comments
(For Your 1st Year or Any Year)

1. Do any simple craft project together. Don’t obsess about neatness: have fun. Make decorations for a “Family Friday Feast” party and kick off your new school year with a celebration.

2. Read aloud to your children, even if it’s only for one week of the summer or for a short period each day. Pick a short, simple book or use fun poetry. Be expressive! Use different voices for each character. Take turns and let the children read, too. Listen to an audio book as an alternative.

3. Take your children for a walk each day. Keep it short, if desired. Focus on everyday sights you usually overlook. Use this time to get into the routine of discussing simple things together.

4. Use the hot summer days to hide in the air conditioning and learn italic handwriting, read and write silly poetry, read a stack of books from the library (even picture books), do a jigsaw puzzle, or play every board game you own at least once.

5. Visit a museum, zoo, or other “field trip.” Follow up with a time of family discussion about each person’s favorite points and new discoveries.

6. Hold a “Cooking Marathon Day” to make some basic meal components ahead and freeze them for use on busy homeschool days. Make a huge batch of cookies and freeze them in small packages for quick treats in the car on field trip days.

7. Hold a “Game Day” and let each child select a favorite game, and everyone plays together, rotating through the selections. Relax, laugh and get silly, and enjoy each other’s company.

8. Hold a “Family Conference” to discuss what each member expects from homeschooling. Let each express his hopes and fears, likes and dislikes. This time of open sharing will reveal some new things you had not thought of trying and some other things you may want to avoid. (I had not realized how traumatizing a teacher’s red pencil had become to my formerly public schooled child until she shared, so I then began marking her papers with other, happier colors.)

9. Back-to-school shopping–even homeschoolers enjoy a few new items. Find some new containers for homeschool storage, art materials, or just some fun pencils and notebooks. Purchase a special reference book, wall map, or other useful learning aid for the whole family. If your students have left public or private school to begin homeschooling, allow them to choose some things that were not allowed for use in their last classroom (Trapper binders, mechanical pencils, colored-ink pens).

10. Begin classes with only one subject per day for each student. After a week, add a second subject; week three, add two more subjects. Continue until you are up to your full schedule.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Deciding to Homeschool, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Leaving Public School, Scheduling, Tactile Learning, Top 10 (and other) Lists, Visual Learning
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