Homeschool Helps

2006:
 

by Julie Druck of York, Pennsylvania ~ Used by permission

Julie writes a monthly newsletter, "A Heart for Home." 

          Though the school year is winding down, I wanted to include some fun ideas to finish your year with and/or to do in the summertime. A lifestyle of learning never ends!

* A fun (and delicious!) way to teach your child fractions is to use chilled chocolate bars. A Hershey bar is divided into small rectangles - simply break them apart and use them to teach your children some simple fractions.

* "Mad Libs" is a hilarious and painless way that teach parts of speech. Remember those silly fill-in-the-blank books from when you were a kid? "Mad Libs" contain stories which are missing various words. You ask your child to name a random noun, verb, etc. When you read the story later, the words that they chose make the story silly.

* For a little writing/geography project, list the letters of the alphabet vertically down the side of a sheet of paper. Have your child use a globe and find a country for each letter of the alphabet.

* Using packing peanuts for projects is a great way to recycle as well as have some fun! We have made packing peanut sculptures with toothpicks. The boys have also wet the ends of them and stuck them together for unusual sculptures. Caleb wet the ends and stuck the peanuts together to form the whole alphabet. Besides making things with them, they’re fun to use as a simple science experiment: Most packing peanuts are now made of cornstarch which will dissolve in water.

* Ben likes to play the "Letter Value Game" that covers language arts as well as math. Down the left-hand side of a piece of paper, list the ABC’s in order. Then write 1 cent beside the A, two cents beside the B, etc.  Next, give your child a word - for example, "dad." Have him figure out "how much" the word "dad" costs - which would be 9 cents. Start with small words and work up to bigger ones.

* An interesting lesson on geography can be done in the produce section of your supermarket. I have occasionally allowed the boys to choose a piece of fruit that they have never tasted. We buy it, take it home and try to find out where in the world that fruit grows. Of course, we then sample it! This is how Eli discovered that he loves mango.