Ten Special Days for Fun and Learning
When your homeschooling rut is feeling deeper than the great chasms of Grand Canyon, perseverance may get the work done, but these ten special days will restore the joy of learning that sometimes gets buried under all the schedules and textbooks.
Have a reading day. Lay aside textbooks, math drills, and history timelines. Give your children the freedom of an entire day of reading. Give yourself the opportunity to catch up on household tasks or finish reading that book of your own. Let children choose their own reading material, kick back, and forget about book reports and comprehension questions. I bring out magazines that I’ve collected for those who want to start small. This day may seem like a no-brainer, but whenever children read, they’re expanding their vocabularies, their spelling, and their worlds.
The next time you’re in need of a fresh idea during a stale homeschooling week, let a special day provide more fun for children, more time for teachers, and refreshment for weary souls.
Power Packets. I’m always gathering more worksheets and workbooks than can fit into our everyday schedule. Eventually, I put these random treasures to good use. To start, I categorize them. In the corner of each math sheet I draw a red circle; grammar pages are marked with a purple diamond; reading work is coded with an orange square, and so on. I put packets together for each child’s learning level. On Power Packet day, I give each child an index card with his assignments for the day: four diamonds, six squares, two triangles. The children enjoy the change of pace as well as the power of choosing which worksheets they will complete for the day. Happy students make for a happy teacher.
Clean up club. Sometimes schoolwork has to take the back seat to pressing life issues. You’ve just gotten back from a family vacation or you’ve been spending all of your time caring for ailing parents. Before you can get your school day in order, you have to get the house back in order. On days like this we form the “Clean Up Club”. Lesson plans and schedules are out. Dust rags and brooms are in. Cleaning and organizing are skills that shouldn’t be undervalued. Other benefits include teamwork and the development of a healthy respect for the work you do as a parent every day.
Student teachers. Once or twice a year we brainstorm our favorite h ome learning activities. Then we invite one or two younger friends who are homeschooled over to share a day with us. My children are able to share their favorite activities, as teachers, with their friends. These days not only give you a day off but they give another tired homeschooling parent a break.
Everything’s all-write. Here’s another special day that requires no prep from you. Have an all-write day. Any form of writing is allowed. Children can catch up on their journaling, or write thank-you notes to people who are special in their lives, or letters to long-distance friends or pen pals. Other options might include writing stories and poems.
Jeopardy. I often give periodic reviews disguised as a game of Jeopardy!. I throw in some quirky and fun categories along with the basics and the kids brush up on previously learned material without cracking a book. Sometimes when the kids don’t want the fun to end, they’ll make up questions. They become host. I become contestant. This is a sure way to get the best of a ho-hum day.
Keep in Touch. Devote a day towards producing a family newsletter. Have children write features on recent family activities, current school projects, field trips they have enjoyed, or book reviews. Don’t forget to include artwork. If you’re producing the newsletter on the computer, kids are sharpening their skills using your publishing program and scanners can be used to add original art. They will have so much fun publishing their own newsletter that they will hardly realize all the work they put into it. By distributing your publication to friends and family, you will be keeping in touch and taking another step towards demystifying homeschooling to skeptics. Go to www.homeschoolingtoday. com/nov07/newsletter to download easy-to-use newsletter templates.
School’s a day at the beach—or the park, or the ball field. Relocate your classroom for the day. Pack up your books and assignments and take them with you. Subjects are covered without complaints when kids are wiggling their toes through the sand and breathing in the fresh air as they read. And they are eager to check off required work so they can throw a ball around at the field or take a dip in the pond.
Puzzlemania. Puzzles can be found everywhere, from the daily newspaper to Sunday School handouts. When I see a puzzle cast aside I snatch it up and save it in a folder for future use. Then I birthed Puzzle Day as our “future use”. This is another day when we take a break from regularly scheduled learning without taking a break from learning altogether. This one takes a little preplanning and a trip to the library to choose the best mindbenders. For little ones I visit the children’s room; for high schoolers I dig into S.A.T. prep books or Mensa workbooks. I set up some hands-on puzzles (like the ones found here: www.homeschoolingtoday. com/nov07/hands-on ) on the kitchen table so kids know right away what kind of day they’re in for. Then I offer up anything from Sudokus and crosswords, to word searches and logic puzzles. For some online puzzling time, visit www.homeschoolingtoday. com/nov07/puzzles .
The next time you’re in need of a fresh idea during a stale homeschooling week, let a special day provide more fun for children, more time for teachers, and refreshment for weary souls. You, O God, sent a plentiful rain, Whereby You confirmed Your inheritance, When it was weary. (Psalm 68:9 NKJV)
©2009 Homeschooling Today magazine, Nehemiah Four, LLC