Resourceful learning - use what you have

... and create a more memorable learning experience at the same time!

Everyone has heard stories of children enjoying playtime with items that are not technically toys. Banging on pots and pans, cubby houses made with old sheets, etc. Well, what about learning with objects that are not what you'd find in your standard classroom? Cheaper - check; fun - check; a learning experience - check; what more could we want? :)

Last year I was trying to figure out a maths lesson for Sunshine where she could kind of work on her own. I wanted to set her up with instructions and then let her go with it while I got onto household chores. A year or so before, she was given a Barbie computer thing. It is a toy, with a keyboard and basic monochrome-dot-matrix styled screen. It had a few games on it - 'educational' typed things that Sunshine didn't often use because it was a bit hard for her. I realised though that there were a few games that she could do so I went through them and wrote a list of the games numbers she could do. A variety of memory, sequence, pattern and basic one digit maths sums. Then every Friday for a month or so, Sunshine sat down and went through the list I had made doing the exercises, ticking off as she accomplished each task. She loved it - she loved the variety of learning from something other than the normal book we had been working on, and I think she liked having a pixel-y Barbie speaking encouragement to her as she worked through. Ticking the items off would have given her a sense of achievement also - I always loved ticking things off lists as a child (pretending to be the teacher!). So this is an example of a toy we had around the house, that didn't really get used for it's potential and utilising it to create a memorable learning experience. What do you have around your house that could be used for learning?

A quick word on manipulatives...
I want to encourage you to think of all kinds of unusual items around the house or garden or park or coffee shop (where ever you are) to use as educational aids. In the picture above, Sunshine used cherry tomatoes for her addition work, but you can use anything. I read an article where a homeschooling Mum would reach for anything she could such as oranges to roll to her child while counting. If you are in a coffee shop - use sugar sachets or plastic spoons. Basically, think outside the box of what is available to a child in a standard school room and use it. Enhance the learning experience and teach your child resourcefulness and creative learning at the same time.

Measure-ate it—an accidental maths lesson

A couple of days ago, we were playing with jigsaw puzzles. I love it when the children want to do this because I think of it as a rich way to learn - with their little brains trying this piece and that piece, solving the puzzle. It's fun and exciting ;) Sweet-pea has especially taken to our Nemo puzzle and was engaged in a race with Sunshine to finish first. Sweet-pea did have a head start, and a bit of help from me - which I did more from a perspective to spend time with her, rather than to really help her. The head start was kind of substantial and she won.

Feeling very pleased with herself, Sweet-pea then announced it was time to "measure-ate it". Upon further investigation, I realised she meant measure it. My natural reaction to this was to say, "oh no, you don't need to measure it... what a funny thing to do..." but fortunately, before I spoke I realised the beauty of the situation. She was naturally learning, and my role in that was to support her, and offer what knowledge I could to enrich her learning in this path she was naturally interested in.

Off she ran to get the ruler and before we knew it, I was teaching her how to measure with a ruler each side of the puzzle. 18cms each side. After that, we discussed how all the sides being equal meant that it was a square. She felt quite satisfied and while she might not remember all that we did and the rules that I demonstrated to her (ie, all sides of a square are equal in length, when you measure with a ruler make sure you line one edge up with the line above the 0, etc.), her brain made new pathways to learning and natural investigation which are valuable in her education journey.

Illustration lesson on roses

Using our reference books on roses I created the following lesson.

Objective: to have the girls sit down, study a picture and try to replicate it, in their own style/ability.

Method:

1. Ask each child to pick a picture of a rose that they liked in their books. If you are like me, and look for challenges for your second child to break out on his/her own (and not copy the older sibling), using different pictures works well.
2. In a special scrap book, I asked them to copy the rose that they chose as best they could, using the instruments I chose - this time I chose pencils. 
3. Being older, Sunshine was asked to write the name of the rose she drew.

Outcome: here are pics of their work (unfortunately not good pics, I blame the camera!).

Sunshine's picture of a Joseph's Coat rose

Sweet-pea's picture of 'a rose'.

Harrison was busy with crayon drawing during the lesson.

A library trip - expanding my mind and my babes

For something different last week, we visited a library in a local country town that has recently been renovated. Such a beautiful space to spend a morning! I went with the plan to read while we were there rather than borrow anything because I didn't feel we needed any new books (we still had some from our local library).

So we picked a few picture books, read them and then I had a wander around to see if they had anything cool that our library didn't have.

My girls are drawn to the colourful, princessey, (and quite trashy) books that haunt the junior fiction sections and I want to try to change that. I don't want to read them nothing, junky books. So I look for classics to try to expand their minds to appreciate good things.

As I was walking around, I had a brilliant idea... My girls love love love roses. So working with what they have demonstrated as an interest (I know, I know, I've heard that a million times around homeschool blogs - work with the child's interests), I took them to the gardening section and got them to pick out two books on roses. They were full adult, reference books, but my girls fully jumped at it. While we were there, Sunshine also spotted a travel book on Paris (another love for my children - Paris - I am really looking forward to taking them there one day!) so I let her borrow that too.

The girls have had so much enjoyment out of those books since we got them. I think they received more attention than any picture books or junior fiction books I would normally got them, and they were learning! and they were filling their treasure houses of brains with good, wholesome and lovely things. Total win!

Here are my learnings from the experience:

1. Work with the child's interests! Especially when you are trying to expand their minds with good things.
2. Illustrated reference books are not too old for a 4 and 6 year old (provided the content is pure of course!).

Hopscotching the lesson away

Sunshine and Sweet-pea were asking me about hopscotch and showing me how they try to play it on the tiles inside the house. That got me thinking, why not give them some chalk to draw on the concrete, we could have our own hopscotch going on and they could get some exercise and turn it into a bit of a lesson. So that is what we did!

I didn't really have any learning objectives set, I know that Sunshine could always do with reinforcing her number writing so I knew she was going to write her own numbers. They both tried to draw the squares but it didn't work out so well so I did that bit and wrote the numbers for Sweet-pea (but she had to tell me which ones to write). As I they were doing it, I realised they were refining they're coordination (we introduced the pebble throw to skip blocks).

Once they were tired and ready to go inside, Sunshine insisted on drawing  a picture of it on paper and writing about it. So we rolled in some copywork to the activity also (I wrote a sentence about it for Sweet-pea which she copied over and Sunshine composed a very long sentence which I wrote out for her to copy). Turned into quite a big lesson which all enjoyed!

Good buy - cheap homeschool supplies

A good resource I picked up about a year ago was a set of thin chopping boards from Aldi, which cost about $4 for a pack of 4. They are really thin, and flexible and work excellently as a portable work surface for under paper for drawing with textas, painting, gluing, you name it! The children know, if they want to do drawing or colouring or anything with textas, they grab a board and pop it under their work. Even my 20 month old, Harrison knows to get one if he wants to draw. With these, my children are free to colour or paint or do whatever messy business they like without me stressing over them potentially ruining the rug, blanket, floor, bed, table etc...

Always learning - homeschool plans for our big trip

I don't like to leave an easy opportunity to learn unlearnt so in addition to lots of random things I expect us to encounter, learn and discuss over our trip I have specifically planned the following homeschool activities.

• We went to the library and picked out two junior fiction books. I don't know if we will read both of them or even finish one of them, but I feel like just by starting out this way we are making good habits and planting good seeds.
• New colouring books and textas! I like to be really free with providing new colouring in books and textas. Besides being fun, it teaches the children concentration, develops their artistic skills and their fine motor skills.
• I splashed out on a scrap book for Sunshine and Sweet-pea for each of them to journal their trip. Sweet-pea will probably draw pictures, maybe paste some pictures, and write a word here or there. I plan for Sunshine to write a sentence about each day or so on something she has done or experienced, along with pictures (pasting or drawing). Oh, and when I say write a sentance, I mean she would decide what to write and I will write it on a scrap piece of paper and she will copy it into her book.

Incidentally, by the nature of this trip, there will be lots of socialisation with family and strangers, of different ages. Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, old family friends, cousins, children of old friends of mine, etc. Will be fun! :P

A cheap and cheerful homeschool activity

This afternoon we did 'cutting and pasting'. A fun way to spend an afternoon - Sunshine and Sweet-pea enjoy using sissors and who doesn't enjoy using glue?!

Basically, I look for opportunities to pick up magazines or interesting pamphletes. I have the inflight magazine from a recent plane ride, a travel brochure that I asked for at a local travel agency and a couple of wholesome magazines. We have a few childrens sissors, but I find they don't cut well, so we all share the one good pair we have and I supervise (although I have trained Sunshine and Sweet-pea on being sensible with sissors). Then they are free to cut and paste to their hearts content. I love that the images they are seeing are of far off lands, different landscapes and include things they don't encounter in our day-to-day Australian life.

An extension on the lesson for Sunshine was if she wanted to, I asked her to tell a story from the pictures she pasted, which she just loved to do and present to me and Sweet-pea.