Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Sharing 'Out of the Box' Homeschooling Ideas

I Had a Thought

Today marks the 3rd month of my blog!!  I've had over 8,000 'views' in that time and while I have no idea if that is good, bad, or unimpressive - *I* think it's awesome and I thank you, dear reader, for stopping by and perusing my wares, so to speak.

So, I was thinking of what to 'give' you on our 3 month anniversary and quite frankly, I'm stumped.  Then, I had this thought.  Why don't we all give each other something?

Yesterday, I blogged about our 'Fun School' project and how that works.  That was sort of my 'Out of the Box' homeschooling idea that I had and I shared it.  You might have missed that post - go ahead and read it now, I'll wait - it's the one right after this one.

Oh, you're back!  Good.  Now, you may love the Fun School stuff or you may not believe it's something that could work for your family.  Perhaps there's just one little gem inside the idea that you really liked and you are going to give that a whirl!  That's the GREAT thing about homeschoolers, we are creative, out of the box thinkers, planners, and doers!  Right?  Right!

So, here's my thought - tell me (and all my other readers) in a comment below one really cool, out of the box, idea you use in homeschooling your children.  I don't care what it is!  The way you taught your children to learn their math facts, the way you conduct story time, where you do a certain activity and why, a routine that you've developed that works, and on and on.  I don't care what it is!  As homeschoolers we all do things a little, or a lot, differently that the way things are done in public school because, well WE CAN and because we work at it and work at it until we figure out what works for our kids!  I know there is something that each of us does in our daily homeschool walk that we think others might find odd - but that we secretly enjoy and know works!  Let's come out of the shade and into the sun and share the cook, quirky, odd, weird out-of-the-box thing we do!

So, tell me that 'out of the box' thing that you and your children do in homeschooling!  
We can all get inspired by each others' ideas!

Don't let me down!  I'm waiting to hear from YOU!


Happy 3 month Anniversary!

~Mari B.

7 comments:

  1. I always say we're "eclectic" in our homeschool style. We use the unschooling method mainly, but toss in a few things like workbooks here and there. I have two Autistic boy, with other special needs. Thinking outside the box is the only way they learn and the only way we get things done.

    One thing we do is use Legos as a large part of our day. My boys love building with Legos, they have 4 drawers full of them. My oldest loves castles and knights so he'll build entire medieval towns, complete with catapults and gates. He'll then describe each feature in detail, tell me how many bricks he used, he'll use other math concepts to figure out scale, volume, how many people could live there, and more.

    My youngest loves to build space machines- rockets, shuttles, all sorts of alien type machinery, and housing. He will tell me a story about what each machine does, the aliens who use it, and I will add some math concepts for him like adding bricks or basic multiplication to figure out how many bricks he has in one area.

    We have a lot of ways that we step outside the box, but Legos seem to be a huge thing in our household.

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  2. Haven't done this yet because mine are too little, but my mom did it with us and I did it with my students when I was student teaching. Multiplication facts war! I used a deck of cards minus the face cards, and two players each slap down one card at a time. The first to multiply them together and yell the correct answer gets the stack, and so on until one player has all the cards.

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    1. We've played Multiplication War in our house too! I *love* math games because it's the only way Punky truly enjoys doing math!

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  3. I have my daughter or myself write out the numbera in chalk on driveway (say 1-60). then she works on skip counting by jumping to the correct next number. right now we are working on 3s, 4s, and 6s. we have also used this approach to answering addition and subtration problems.

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  4. Two of my 7-year-old son's favorite activities are our Math Quests and "Book Reports". My son loves math, so as a way to bring in extra math in a more "real world" kind of way, he has a weekly Math Quest. They are different each week - last week it was on Fibonacci numbers (which he thinks are 'so cool' lol). He had to research on the Internet to find info on Fibonacci, make a PowerPoint (he loves using the computer), go to the park and find the sequences in nature (like a pinecone or flower), mount his finds on paper, and draw a gigantic Fibonacci sequence on the driveway. Each week's quest is completely different. I have a folder full of them he gets to pick from. He picks them on Friday in case we need to go to the library that weekend and has until the following Friday to finish and present them.

    He also loves the "Book Reports" we do. We writes a short summary (I don't have a minimum or maximum). He "takes pictures" (draws scenes - at least 6) while in the world of the book, and then does some sort of project. He can choose from the ideas I've come up with or come up with his own,as long as he okays them through me. He can do a map, a movie poster, a T-Shirt, a painting, a wordle, a national anthem, change something about the book like setting, etc. I've only assigned him to do a report for one book so far, but he ends up asking to do them for everything he reads :-)

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    1. Stephanie - Awesome! Sounds like you have a very creative son!

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