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The Value of Supplemental Activities

March 2, 2006 by 1 Comment

A friend recently posed an intriguing question to a group of homeschooling moms: “If money were no object, what would you purchase first for your homeschool?” The usual wish-list items came out: specific curriculum choices, books, more books, shelves for all the books, rooms just for school stuff, and books. However, I was the most surprised by reading a spontaneous part of my own answer: “For us, it wasn’t the curriculum itself that ‘made’ homeschooling — it was the extra-curricular activities and supplemental things we did that we remember most and learned the most from.” It was an aspect of homeschooling that I had never truly pondered before, at least not in so many words. I have often suggested various activities to help struggling students bridge the learning styles gap with assorted curricula, but suddenly I was seeing activities as The Most Important Part of any homeschooling experience.

It is not the curriculum itself that matters most; it is what you do with the program and what you do besides the program that will make all the difference in your homeschooling endeavor. Supplemental activities can turn a mediocre program into an educational experience far better than the most renowned program on the market. The activities you choose can be tailored to your child’s individual needs and interests, whereas a boxed program must be universally applicable.

Some programs are better than others, but that still goes only so far. My regular readers already know how much I loved Miquon Math for grades 1-3, but the suggested activities were what really drove the concepts home. Practice away from the workbooks and playing and experimenting with Cuisenaire rods are what solidified the knowledge that was presented in the books. Saxon Math effectively used real-life examples through word problems to teach the students how to set up a formula. (Once they have the formula, any math student can solve the formula.) Our supplemental activities for Saxon math included applying the formulas to more areas of real life: relating fractions to pies and candy bars, doubling recipes for practice using fractions, calculating the areas, perimeters, and angles for home improvement projects, and applying the mathematics of probabilities to everyday situations in my students’ lives. When my daughter had trouble understanding probability from the textbook example of red marbles and blue marbles, I changed the problem to fit her teddy bear collection. Suddenly, her favorite white polar bear stood out in marked contrast to the other bears, and the chances of selecting him at random from a pile of stuffed bears was more easily understood.

We played a great deal with construction toys, but we always built something, even if our projects were not elaborate architectural models. We never stacked the bricks just for the sake of stacking bricks. Instructions for Erector Set models or K’nex figures were a launching pad for our imaginations as we challenged ourselves to combine patterns or build bigger or better designs. Real life usually requires you to have some type of plan, so our activities always had a basic plan as well. We dared to dream, and we learned through the trying, whether we succeeded or not.

We are all familiar with the jokes about students who put a book underneath their pillows, hoping to absorb information by osmosis while they slept. We smile and laugh, knowing that there is no possible way for that to happen, but many times we urge a child to “read the book,” expecting him to absorb all the information in that manner. If the child is adept at visual learning, it may happen, but so much more knowledge and understanding can be gained through the addition of a few supplemental activities. Activities break down the barriers of learning styles, making it possible to teach your child in the way he learns best, no matter what curriculum you are using.

When I took a college chemistry course, I worked industriously at memorizing vast quantities of information. They were only meaningless words to me, but I forced myself to memorize them so that I could reproduce them on test papers. However, through working in the chemistry lab, experimenting with the acids, bases, minerals, and gases, I began to understand the concepts behind those words. I had read the book, and I had learned the facts, but I did not gain understanding until I got into a supplemental activity. Watching bubbles form in a beaker of water as electrodes forced the hydrogen and oxygen molecules to separate made the atomic bonding process straightforward and uncomplicated. It was right there in front of me. I could watch it happen. I collected bubbles of the two gases in separate test tubes and proved their identities with another test. A similar experiment electroplated a nickel coin with the copper from a penny. The diagrams my professor scribbled on the chalkboard became stop-motion animations of the molecular breakdown process. He showed me through symbols and arrows the explanation for what I saw forming in the beaker. It was not sleight-of-hand illusion; it was science taking place at my fingertips. It was not something I could learn sufficiently from merely reading a book. I had read about the process, but actually doing it made the reading portions of my lesson obsolete.

Supplemental activities do not have to be expensive or use fancy materials. Many wonderful, educational activities can be obtained from the simple things you already have around the house.
* Read aloud and discuss plot lines, characters, and what-do-you-think-will-happen-next.
* Play with art and craft materials, even if you have no natural artistic ability whatsoever. If you have difficulty drawing, get off the paper and try “sculpting” with Play-Doh — maybe you are more of a three-dimensional thinker.
* Draw diagrams, even if you have no natural artistic ability whatsoever. The simple chalkboard illustrations that have helped me gain understanding were not artistic or even dimensionally accurate, but I still learned and understood.
* Use manipulatives: hands-on learning aids, whether they are homemade flash cards, things for counting and sorting, or a clock-face made from a paper plate and cardboard “hands.” If it helps your student understand a concept, it is worth your time, trouble, and expense.
* Build models. Who cares if popsicles sticks do not resemble quality building materials? I bought my students a small package of pre-notched “popsicle” sticks (think miniature, flat Lincoln Logs) in the craft department of Wal-Mart. They never looked like much when we built things with them, but the knowledge gained from the process of fitting them together was irreplaceable.
* Do experiments. A vinegar and baking soda reaction is fascinating to someone who has never watched it before. Woodburning with nothing more than a magnifying glass and the sun is another unforgettable experience (especially when you stop paying attention to where you have the light focused and your leg suddenly gets hot).
* Play games. Children sometimes balk at spending more time studying their lessons, but have you ever had a child turn down the chance to play a game? Any game using money is math; many games require forethought and strategy, and all games teach sportsmanship. Get together with other homeschooling families and share your favorite games with each other.
* Invent a new game: take a concept that your students need work on and invent a new game for practicing that concept. Make the pieces yourself or borrow them from other games and write all the necessary rules for some real-life problem-solving experience. I dare you to try it.
* Take on hosting a group project (even if it is nothing more than a Monopoly marathon) and enlist your students to help you plan and execute it. We learned much more from preparing large-scale events than we ever could have learned from merely participating in them. My daughter first ventured into administrative duties when we tackled an event that combined several homeschool support groups. The skills she developed then still serve her today in retail management.
* GO see things and DO stuff: zoos, museums, libraries, etc. A “family pass” will often be usable at more than one location. We purchased a season-long family pass to a small local zoo, only to find that it also entitled us to free admission to a much larger zoo in another city an easy day-trip away. Our pass also included other zoos, history museums, art museums, and science museums for a full year. For a little more than the standard admission for one family visit, we were able to take in multiple wonderful experiences. Another amazing surprise for me was how fascinating unfamiliar libraries were to my children. We dropped by the public library in another city and ended up spending hours exploring it and seeing how its features differed from our local library. Whether you take an extended, educational, family vacation or just walk around your neighborhood noticing the architectural differences, it can be a memorable learning experience.

Anything that takes place outside of the textbooks or outside of the house is always memorable. If I were to ask my children to name their “Top 10 Favorite Things” from our homeschooling days, none of their responses would include the textbooks we used. Their “Top 1,000” list would barely touch on textbooks. Let me say this again: it is not the curriculum itself that matters the most. It is what you do with the program and what you do besides the program that will make all the difference in your homeschooling experience.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Curriculum Choices, Encouragement for Parents, Homeschool How-To's, Homeschooling as a Lifestyle, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Tactile Learning

The Importance of Play in Education

September 21, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Back in the days when my children were toddlers and our home resembled a Fisher-Price obstacle course, I used to envy a local toy lending library. What if I could follow that method at home and keep all toys, books, and other childhood paraphernalia sorted into locked cabinets, allowing my “patrons” to borrow only three items per week? The restrictions could be expanded to enforce the replacement of all playthings after 5:00 pm and prohibit their removal before 9:00 am the next morning. Nothing would be allowed to remain on the floor in major traffic paths, puzzle pieces would never be lost (or eaten), and life would be peaceful and pleasant. That, however, was only a daydream, and like nearly all daydreams, it is not compatible with reality.

As messy as playtime can become, I have learned to see the tremendous value in it for education. When I enrolled my son in public Kindergarten (yes, that was a mistake, but I remedied it the following year), the teacher spent a brief time with each child and assessed their skills. She praised me for having given my son so many different experiences, from trips to the zoo to reading books to him. She praised his ability to use scissors, crayons, markers, and paintbrushes with relative proficiency. She said he ranked far above some of her previous students in his knowledge and talents. Silly me, all this time I had thought that was what parents were supposed to do with their children. What has filled the past five years, if a child entering Kindergarten has never used crayons or sat on a lap to hear a story?

I have friends who have recently returned from several years as missionaries in Africa. In hearing the mundane details of their daily routines, I began to see deeper into the value of children’s playtime. The toys I used to dread picking up day after day are not available to most African-bush children or to the poorer children of any culture. The education supplied by what we consider to be simple toys was demonstrated in the adult man who was employed as household help for this missionary family. He worked for them for several years and yet never could master the task of stacking the bowls, pans, or containers in the kitchen cupboards. The colorful, nesting cups that my children stacked into towers, knocked over, nested together, dumped out, and stacked again had not played a foundational role in this man’s education. As a result, he was not familiar with a concept that is so incredibly common to most of us. This gap in his education left him confused as to how to successfully arrange the kitchenware with largest on the bottom and smallest on the top. Repeated demonstrations and instructions did not help. His lack of experience in the early years had left a seemingly permanent mark.

Just as adults can become bored with doing the same repetitive tasks over and over, children also appreciate variety in their playtime. If I can belabor the nesting cups topic just a bit longer, any variety within that task will act to further the child’s understanding of the nesting concept, whether various shapes of cups (round, square, hexagonal, etc.) or different types of stackable items (paper cups, Mom’s measuring cups with handles, or an assortment of empty shoe boxes in graduated sizes). Other types of toys expand upon this same nesting principle: stacking colored rings onto a peg in size order, nesting dolls, even shape-sorter toys combine the principle of matching with nesting the object into its coordinating hole. Likewise, variety enriches lessons of all types for older children; hands-on learning goes much farther than simply breaking up the boredom.

Children learn from the moment they take their first breath, from learning how to express discomfort and that their expression results in someone’s attention to those needs, to observing how others around them eat, speak, walk, and draw pictures. Toy tools give early practice to the budding carpenters, just as toy kitchens help to prepare the future cooks. Puzzles teach problem solving, fine-tune motor skills, and improve observation and memory skills. Dolls offer children “parenting” opportunities, from dressing the baby to cuddling and comforting. Art and craft materials broaden a child’s ability to express his ideas, improve motor coordination, and satisfy the grandparents’ need for something to put on the refrigerator door. Stop for a moment to ponder the educational gaps in the child who grows up without any of these “playtime” skills.

It has been said that “play is a child’s work,” and there are many aspects where that is true. Children work hard at their playtime, often becoming physically exhausted through their efforts and needing a rest from playtime. We should also expect that they will experience mental fatigue when they have been engrossed in play tasks that require thinking and problem solving, such as nesting the boxes mentioned above (for the littlest ones) or assembling a jigsaw puzzle (for somewhat older children).

Moms and Dads, although your family’s collection of playthings may never seem to stop growing and rarely seems to be out from underfoot, be assured that those toys are serving a very valuable purpose in your little ones’ lives. The more experiences you can offer your children with widely varied play activities, including problem solving concepts or art and craft materials, the better equipped your children will be when it comes time for them to delve into “real” learning experiences.

[See also Sorting Toys Is Algebra]

Filed Under: Encouragement for Parents, Encouraging Your Student, Family Unity, Learning Outside the Books, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning

A New Approach to Spelling-Word Lists

September 6, 2005 by Leave a Comment

I despise the way spelling is taught. I managed to get through the spelling workbooks that I had in school only because I was a word puzzle aficionado. When it came time to teach spelling to my own children, I became terribly frustrated. They did not instantly share my fascination for words or word puzzles. In fact, they found spelling workbooks to be very confusing and incredibly boring.

I remember spending hours as an early reader compiling my own lists of rhyming words and noticing that foot and boot appeared the same, but did not sound the same, which generated more lists. Writing all the possible combinations of certain sounds led me to a deep understanding of phonics rules and their applications. Exploration of prefixes and suffixes took me even further.

The public school method of test and retest used in the books we tried simply did not teach how to spell. Over the years, we abandoned the workbook pages and came up with our own methods for a spelling class. I emphasized prefixes, suffixes, Greek and Latin roots, and spelling patterns. Too often, the published spelling curricula grouped together words with nothing in common, ignoring the obvious patterns to be found.

I think that focusing on those patterns is an excellent way to learn spelling. Public school teachers have been told repeatedly in their college training classes that there are too many exceptions to too few rules. I disagree. I found a marvelous book called The ABC’s and All Their Tricks, which shows the patterns, the words sharing those patterns, and explains the origins of those patterns. It is a wonderful reference work — which finally explained to me how “w” can be used as a vowel.

Your lists of words can follow phonics rules or come from pre-prepared lists, such as the weekly lists found in spelling workbooks or from grade-level-specific lists. Another possibility for the avid reader is to compile his own list of unfamiliar words from his regular reading. Encourage your student to look up those words in the dictionary for origin, meaning, and pronunciation, and then incorporate them into your own customized spelling and vocabulary study program. My son expanded his own vocabulary by routinely browsing through the dictionary looking for new words.

My personal preference for learning a list of words would be to print out the chosen list (the time period for learning the words should be based upon your student’s ability) and post it in a prominent place where it will be seen multiple times throughout each day. Study the spelling patterns and then use repeated observation to cement the correct spelling into the brain. The student can use those words as the basis for exploring various art mediums: alphabet rubber stamps, calligraphy pens, or paper collage (cut and paste letters from newspapers and magazines). Bring out the letter tiles and cards from various table games and assemble all of the words from the current spelling list. If you have students who share my love of word puzzles (bless them!), challenge them to create their own puzzles — making the puzzles will teach much more than simply solving a puzzle will.

Daily observation can teach much more than we realize. Frank Gilbreth, the real-life father of Cheaper by the Dozen fame (stick with the book or 1950’s movie), painted information on the bathroom walls for his children to absorb while they performed their daily bathing and brushing rituals. After completing Morse code charts, Dad painted silly coded messages in various places around the house, fully expecting his children to translate them — and they did.

Repetition and drill by themselves are painfully boring, but when used creatively can become an enjoyable way to learn without wasting endless hours in rote memorization. Use what you have around your house and come up with clever new ways for your students to study the words they are learning.

Filed Under: Auditory Learning, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Phonics, Reading, Spelling, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning

“Mystery Boxes” and the Scientific Method

August 26, 2005 by 1 Comment

My daughter had an interesting exercise in her college chemistry lab which we modified for use at home and again later for a group science class. It is a lesson in using experimentation to make a hypothesis (first guess) and then prove whether or not that theory is correct. These directions tell how we adapted it for a co-op class with two dozen 7-12th graders. If you want to do it at home for only 1 or 2 students, you will obviously only need one set of Mystery Boxes.

Matching Mystery Boxes were prepared in advance for each team of students: an item or group of matching items were placed into a cardboard box that was large enough to allow the items to roll around freely. (Sizes and shapes of boxes may differ, and the contents may vary in quantity to increase difficulty for advanced students.) The box edges were taped shut, and each box was marked with an identifying number. Teams of 4-6 students were each given a set of six boxes to test, and the students were instructed to use the Scientific Method to determine what was inside each box.

When a student picked up a box, he wrote down the number of the box and his hypothesis of what he thought might be inside, then proceeded to tip, shake, rattle, and listen to prove or disprove his theory and make a conclusion. Each box was passed around to teammates to see if they all came to the same conclusion. When each team had completed its series of several boxes, the boxes were opened to reveal their true contents. Teams were to be as certain as possible of their determinations and not show the contents to other teams. Sample items used in the Mystery Boxes were paper clips, a pencil, marbles, coins, or a large eraser (only one type of item per box). You may choose to use items that are more difficult for older students: several cotton swabs, large rubber bands, pencils in one box and pens in another, a spoon, etc.

The items should be common to everyone, but they are in uncommon circumstances, making them surprisingly tricky to identify. Do we really notice the differences in sounds made by coins and paper clips? How can I determine if the object in this box is a pencil or a pen? Why does the object in this box roll easily this way but seems to slide that way? A delicate touch is needed to tip the box slightly and make a pencil roll slowly enough to hear its six sides or discern its eraser end from the pointed lead end; extreme concentration is required for hearing a few large rubber bands slide softly across their box.

Tips for the Mystery Boxes lesson:
— All Mystery Boxes should be prepared in advance by the teacher so that students have no clue what is inside.
— Objects should be ordinary, common objects, familiar to students.
— Use only one type of item in each box (i.e. do not mix pencils and pens in the same box).
— Objects should roll, slide, or move easily if shaken. Do not use a single tissue, cotton ball, or similar (relatively weightless) object which cannot be sensed in the box.
— Boxes should be large enough to allow objects to roll or slide freely: front to back, side to side, up and down.
— Boxes should be securely sealed to prevent objects from falling out or students from peeking in.
— Multiple items should be used if a single item alone will not have enough identifiable characteristics (a single coin will not be as effective as multiple coins).
— When preparing boxes for a large group class, separate the group into teams and have duplicate sets of boxes so that each team works on the same items. Number the boxes and keep a (hidden) list of their contents to prevent confusion. (All boxes marked #1 contain pencils, all #2 boxes contain rubber bands, etc.)
— Various sizes and shapes of boxes will keep team members focused on their own boxes: “Our #1 box is large and flat, while their #1 box is smaller and taller; they probably don’t contain the same things.” The order of testing the boxes is up to each team: they do not have to proceed in numerical order.
— A set of six boxes (per team) kept each team of five to six students busy for an hour testing, comparing, and discussing. When a team declared that they knew what was in a specific box, I did not lie about the contents, but slyly asked, “Are you sure?” to keep them reasoning and retesting for a longer time.
— I did not tell students what types of items to expect; they were told only “common, everyday objects.” Students had to use their own knowledge to decide what was inside.
— Students must depend on hearing alone (cannot see or feel box contents). Tipping and shaking each box is acceptable, but squeezing or crushing the box to feel its contents is not permitted.
— Thinking skills become better developed as this exercise progresses. Students should test all boxes, and then go through them again, using the knowledge gained throughout the testing process in retesting each box.
— Students may compare the characteristics of boxes with each other (i.e. this box sounds more like coins than that box does).
— Provide paper and pencils for students to write down their hypotheses, reasoning, and conclusions. This is the essential portion of the lesson: learning how to write down their process of experimentation. Students may use their own notebooks, or you may choose to make form-style “lab sheets,” but writing down the process changes this from an entertaining party game into a profitable science lesson.

[For more information on cooperative classes and group activities, visit Topical Index: Co-op Groups.]

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Co-op Groups, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Science, Tactile Learning

Homeschool Gadgets: An Investment in Your Future or a Waste of Money?

March 28, 2005 by Leave a Comment

You are at the educational supplies store or homeschool curriculum fair and see a fancy teaching gadget on display. Yes, it is cute. It may even be on sale, but will it pay for itself in lessons learned or in time saved, or is it destined to become a liability in storage space?

Not every gadget or tool needs to be purchased to teach the subjects you desire your students to learn. Some items can be replicated inexpensively at home from “found” materials — and then discarded Guilt-Free after they have fulfilled their purpose. We made a few with enough care to be able to use them over and over and have kept them for many years. Others can be done without entirely. I once purchased a plastic board covered with tiny pegs that was supposed to illustrate geometric figures when you stretched rubber bands around the pegs. However, only certain shapes could be accurately portrayed, making even my small investment disappointing.

It is also wise to consider storage when purchasing extras for your homeschool. I opted for the world globe printed on a beach ball — perfect roundness was not necessary for us to understand geography, but the deflating capability made storage very easy.

Mail-order catalogs were a great source of ideas for make-it-yourself learning aids. We “borrowed” ideas for items that we would probably not have used more than once. Sometimes just examining the catalog photo and description were enough to illustrate the principle and give my students a basic understanding of the concept. Other times we purchased an item (such as the wooden set of Cuisenaire rods), knowing that it would pay for itself many times over in multiple uses.

I purchased a gadget that held 5 pieces of chalk in evenly spaced wire brackets for drawing parallel lines on a chalkboard. I drew lines for penmanship, musical staffs, and graphing grids for math. I turned my chalkboard into “graph paper” to tame the wayward numbers in long division or multiplication problems: one digit per box clarifies even the poorest handwriting. (My chalk-holder has been passed on to another homeschool family so I cannot prove this, but I think it may also be possible to insert thin white board markers into the wires for use on today’s ubiquitous white boards.)

I made my own geometric shapes (squares, triangles, pentagons, hexagons) out of old file folders for constructing 3-D figures. I made all the shapes to the same dimensions (2″ sides), and the various shapes could be fitted together for very interesting structures. I included an extra 1/4″ tab-strip on each edge, and we used tiny orthodontic rubber bands to link the pieces together, but the pieces could also be glued or taped together for permanence. I saw this idea in a curriculum catalog at a time when we could not spare the money for many extras. My husband had removed a stack of slightly worn file folders from a wastebasket at work, thinking I may be able to use them for something. My oldest student was barely into geometry and angles but got a sneak-peak at how to use compass, protractor, and straight edge to construct our wonderful new learning aids. Both students had great fun assembling 3-D models of geometric solids, which gave them a boost in understanding volume and geometry as those lessons came around.

I purchased inexpensive math manipulatives by buying sugar cubes to use in illustrating volume. We kept them on a jellyroll pan to contain the inevitable crumbs and stacked the cubes to count how many units/rows/layers it took to make a larger block. We also effectively illustrated multiplication and division by grouping the sugar cubes into rows to show 3 rows of 5 sugar cubes was equal to 5 rows of 3 sugar cubes, and both totaled 15 sugar cubes. A few hundred sugar cubes were purchased for a very small price, enabling the children to build perfect mathematical squares and cubes and study the multiplication facts with their hands as well as with their eyes. Numbers on a times-table chart were much more meaningful after they had proved the facts themselves. We worked with the sugar cubes carefully to avoid unnecessary breakage and crumbling, and were able to reuse them many times.

Educational games are a spending temptation for nearly every Mom I know. However, since many of them tend to be rather expensive, exert your self-control and go for the ones that will teach more than one concept. A game that does not have a “fun” element to it will probably not be played with very often, sliding it into the liability category. Try not to allow your game collection to sit idly on the shelf once the age limit or skill level has been passed by your students. Challenge them to create new rules for the game or find new ways to use the game’s equipment to match their new skill levels. Pre-reading games such as Candy Land can be adapted for math skills (see Alternate Methods for Teaching Math for more ideas).

The biggest consideration for buying educational gadgets, reference books, and homeschool materials is: Does this have more than one function? If it is usable for only one thing (especially if that is a very insignificant function), perhaps your hard-earned money would be better spent elsewhere. If the item will be used for multiple tasks over a long period of time, it is probably a wise investment.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Curriculum Choices, Homeschool How-To's, Tactile Learning

Letter and Number Recognition

January 12, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Once upon a time, every typewriter produced the exact same font and all printed books looked pretty much the same. Once upon a time, everyone learned handwriting in the exact same format, and (when done with care) nearly everyone’s handwriting looked the same as anyone else’s. I remember being fascinated that each of my teachers could write on the chalkboard exactly like each of the other teachers. (My own handwriting never quite measured up.) Now we live in a computer-driven world, with no limit to the designs of fonts available. This can present real difficulty for some children in recognizing the similarities and learning their letters. The same problem exists with numbers, sometimes posing an even greater stumbling block.

We overcame this obstacle with a simple, inexpensive, and fun activity. We made a notebook containing samples of each letter (one letter per page), and another notebook for numbers. We scrounged through newspapers, old magazines, and junk mail for examples to be included in our books. The children soon became great detectives, learning to decide for themselves if a certain letter was an “m” or an “n,” or a “P” or an “R,” and “Mom, is this right?” was heard less and less. Children are always attracted by scissors and glue, so the motivation was simple.

Many alphabet books will display numerous objects beginning with each chosen sound, but few will bother to show each letter in different fonts. I remember being stumped as a very young student when my older sister showed me the author’s name on her latest Nancy Drew book and asked me if I could read it. The name, CAROLYN KEENE, was printed in all upper case letters. I was learning to print my name with only a capital “C” and the rest in lower case letters. There seemed to be something very familiar about the author’s name, but it still did not look quite right to me. A generation later, I shared this story with my own children and explained my early confusion with the use of upper and lower case letters. As we assembled our letter notebook, we included both upper and lower case examples, making the variety of letter appearances much less confusing to them.

Our number notebook had individual pages for 0-19, and then grouped pages for the 20’s, 30’s and so on. Once the children had understood the concept from the letter notebook, the number differences were more easily grasped. The 0-9 pages were the most important, since they showed the variations in fonts and all the other pages built upon that principle. We did include a few pictures, usually clipped from grocery ads, showing groups of 3 apples or 5 bananas or a six-pack of soda cans.

The notebooks themselves were scrounged from whatever we had already lying around the house: old 3-ring binders and loose-leaf filler paper, or leftover spiral notebooks with just enough pages remaining. Making the notebooks was the primary exercise in learning the lesson; once the notebooks were completed, we rarely returned to look at them again, unless it was to add another unique example.

Children, from those just beginning to learn their letters to those beginning to read, will benefit from a lesson in the varieties of font designs. A few pieces of paper bound together in some form of booklet, scissors, and a glue stick will be the basis for your simple lesson. All you have to add is junk mail.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Math, Reading, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning

Sorting Toys Is Algebra

December 20, 2004 by Leave a Comment

Do you realize that the mental skill used in sorting army men from building blocks is the same mental skill used in sorting variables in algebra problems? Makes higher math a little less scary, doesn’t it?

When a child can recognize and organize a playroom floor full of toys, he is honing the same skill he will use years later in recognizing and organizing an equation full of x’s, y’s, and xy’s. Whether the army men are green or tan, they are all considered army men, and building blocks are building blocks, regardless of their color. Whether the math variable is 2x or 3x, it is still considered an x-quantity. Army men do not get stored with building blocks, and x’s do not get combined with y’s.

If children are old enough to play with toys, they are old enough to put those toys away again. We used shoeboxes and plastic ice cream buckets large enough to hold all the army men or all the building blocks. Long before reading skills were acquired, I drew picture labels on index cards and taped them to each container (nothing fancy, just rough, cartoon-style illustrations — no words). Each child also had a picture chart for how to clean his room: a drawing of a messy bed and an arrow pointing to a drawing of a made-up bed; a drawing of books on the floor and an arrow pointing to a drawing of books on the shelf; a drawing of clothes in a pile on the floor and an arrow pointing to a drawing of the hamper. You get the idea. So will your kids. The artistically-challenged can adapt the idea with photos or pictures cut from magazines or catalogs.

The skill of tidying up the play area is extremely valuable, both to children and to parents. The children will grow in confidence and courage as they realize they have a new skill. Obviously, the parents will appreciate any amount of help in clearing a path through the house. However, do not expect your tiny tykes to understand this endeavor the first time you spring it on them, and do not expect them to do a first-class, absolutely perfect job… ever (hence the need for containers roomy enough to easily fit the contents). To begin with, sit on the floor with your little darlings and challenge them to pick out all of one specific type of toy from the jumble on the floor and put them into their container while you dispatch all of the other toys to their assigned spots. Point out to them how it is simpler to pick out the largest pieces first, before trying to select the tiniest pieces. Eventually, your little helper will be able to tackle two or three types of toys, one after the other. After they have mastered their sorting skills, you will notice them sorting out several different types of toys at the same time, as you would. Be sure to point out their progress and praise them for it.

Make your pick-up time fun by challenging each other to races or by sliding the Matchbox cars down a strip of racetrack into their storage box. Always allow for clean-up time as a part of playtime, so that no one is caught by surprise, and you are not left to clean up the mess after everyone else is tucked into bed. I did not want to make pick-up time feel like a punishment to be dreaded, so I helped my children as they learned the task and praised them for the good jobs they were doing. I have always enjoyed having someone to talk to while I clean up my kitchen, so I could easily understand why my children wanted my company while picking up their toys. “Together-time” with your children is never wasted time.

Another reward for a job well done was permission to play with more than one board game at a time. When I was a child, my mother had a strict rule that one game or puzzle had to be completely picked up and put away before a second one could be brought out. My children’s success at efficiently sorting and storing won them the privilege of playing with more than one thing at a time — which their creative minds took to new heights as they invented ways of combining games. They found it as much fun to sort out the pieces from multiple games, as it had been to play with the games themselves. Plus, you can only have enough letter tiles to solve some word puzzles when you combine the tiles from Scrabble, Scrabble Junior, and Upwords along with the anagram tiles!

I began teaching this sorting task to my children when they were very small — toddlers, in fact — years before we began homeschooling. I did not actually see the connection to higher math until years later. My children had no difficulty with understanding the concepts of polynomials (xy-type variables, for those of you who have forgotten or not reached that point yet in your homeschool), due in great part, I feel, to the sorting skills they possessed.

We held a birthday party for my daughter at age 15 and invited a handful of her homeschool peers. One of the games we had prepared was a jigsaw puzzle challenge. Each team of 2 girls was given a bag of jigsaw puzzle pieces: 3 puzzles combined — all simple, elementary level puzzles of varying size and complexity, but with all their pieces combined. The challenge was to separate the puzzles and reassemble all 3 puzzles before the other teams completed theirs. I was amazed at how difficult this was for some of the girls. Even though the puzzles were easily separated by the size of their pieces, some of the players had extreme difficulty in recognizing that. None of the puzzles contained more than 100 pieces, and each one was very simple to distinguish from the others and put together. As I later analyzed this situation in regard to the families involved, I concluded that the players who had the most difficulty came from families where Overworked Mom did all the picking up.

We should never feel that teaching our children to do household cleaning tasks is a punishment for them — it is giving them a future, valuable, life skill. In this particular case, they will learn recognition, sorting, and organization — skills valuable for their further education, as well as being beneficial for personal and professional choices they will make later in their lives. Learning to sort toys is learning to prioritize.

[See also The Importance of Play in Education]

Filed Under: Home Chores, Learning Outside the Books, Math, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning
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