Posts tagged ‘project ideas’

Last year we did a “child led” unit on Hanukkah, which included sharing an evening in celebration with some of our Jewish family friends and then attending their synagogue with them for a beautiful hanukia celebration. My daughter (and my Husband and I too!) thoroughly enjoyed learning about the traditions and history of their celebration. This year my daughter asked to learn more about the history and traditions of Christmas around the world.

Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate, but as we are discovering, we really know very little about the traditions and history behind our own beloved celebration. This year’s “child led” Christmas lessons are broken up into the three following categories: Christmas Traditions Around the World, Christmas Symbols, and Holiday Baking. (All three of the categories also cover language arts, geography, and history lessons, as well as hitting upon art, science, and math.)

Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate, but as we are discovering, we really know very little about the traditions and history behind our own beloved celebration.

Each day my daughter selects about five countries and we read aloud their Christmas traditions from Christmas Around the World.

When selecting the countries, she chooses them by region and compares and contrasts the neighboring countries (and then compares and contrasts the different regions). While reading about the Christmas Traditions of France, my daughter got very excited about the “Yule Log Cake” and wanted to make one for our Christmas feast. We found this delicious photo (warning…you will be drooling!) and Yule Log Cake Recipe.

We will be making this on Christmas Eve morning together (one of several Holiday Baking projects). We will also be baking various Christmas cookies from around the world, as well as a gingerbread house.

For Christmas Symbols (including many science rich opportunities in studying the various plants), we are using History of Christmas, one read aloud daily.

It was on reading about the Christmas tree that my daughter discovered Czechoslovakian painted eggs. We researched images of these and will make some painted eggs of our own to place on our tree.

I’ve always wanted to make Peppermint Bark so I think we are going to whip up a batch of these next week (Peppermint Bark Recipe).

We will use a locally made peppermint pig that we will smash to bits for it.  We are lucky enough to have Saratoga Sweets within a reasonable driving distance, so we will visit their sweet shop first and learn more about the process of making them and the traditions associated with it (this info is also on their Web site).

We are having such a jolly good time researching all about Christmas! Do you have a favorite tradition or holiday recipe you would like to share? We’d love to learn more about your traditions too!

Cheers,
Colette

This post was written by Colette D., a new-to-homeschooling Mom and a Lesson Pathways Blog contributing writer. She and her Husband raise their daughter together in the rural countryside of Upstate New York where they like to spend as much time as possible being creative and enjoying nature. She blogs about her adventures in sewing, crafting, and baking (among other things) at yearofhandmade.

Julie C. is a proud homeschooling mom to 3 children. You can find out more about Julie and her family at The Clark Chronicles. This article was originally published 2/17/09 at The Clark Chronicles.

A homeschool group that I am a part of got together today at my house to do some socializing of our children. Er, um, I mean we got together to do some school.

I found a great lesson plan a few weeks ago on THIS website that inspired the lesson. Basically the idea was to teach about a variety of subjects by using popcorn. I love the idea of doing unit studies – Taking one thing and building a multi-disciplinary lesson around it – and this was the perfect way to do just that. I also found THIS WEBSITE with lots of fantastic resources for creating lesson plans using popcorn.

We did art, math, science, social studies, language, history, geography and PE all using lessons utilizing popcorn!

We used all 5 of our senses to experience the popcorn. We  learned about weight and volume, went on a treasure hunt, learned how to keep score using tally marks, took a nature walk to gather branches for our art activity, made hand cranked corn on the stove, estimated how much popcorn 1/2 cup of uncooked corn would yield, measured and weighed uncooked and cooked corn on a food scale, learned about the history of popcorn and identified on a map of the US where most of the world’s popcorn is grown, shucked an ear of corn to see how corn grows, jumped on the trampoline like we were popping kernels of corn and sang popcorn songs to the tunes of row row row your boat and I’m a little teapot.

And we managed to eat lunch together and have some pleasant and edifying adult conversation in the process.

Here are the final results of our popcorn tree – Abby and I did some work on it after her nap:

I made a little downloadable workbook with all the activities – Yours for the taking! We had so much fun with this today and I hope you can use some of the ideas in it for your home or school activities! Enjoy!

For even more great popcorn project ideas, check out these resources featured at LessonPathways.com:

Making Popcorn, Popcorn Jewelry, Popcorn Fractions, Number Popcorn, Popcorn Geography, How Much Popcorn?, Grow Corn from Popcorn, Odd & Even Popcorn, Popcorn Place  Value

Many public schools have videos, movie reels and DVDs devoted to educational topics that teachers are free to use as desired. Obviously, homeschoolers do not always have such resources available. However, there are several ways to enrich your children’s learning experiences with educational movies and videos, without having to purchase each one for yourself.

The Local Library

While most libraries are not able to get videos through Inter-Library Loan (ILL), they often have a nice selection of educational films and documentaries on anything from aeronautics to sports to ballet. If your library allows inter-library loan for videos, or allows videos to be brought in for ILL for educators, your options open up even further!

Online Educational Videos

There are lots of video clips available online on YouTube and teacher resource sites, but search carefully to weed out the junk. Be very specific about what you need. Don’t type in “science.” Type in “Water Cycle Video” instead. One of the benefits of Lesson Pathways is that the searching for video clips has been done for you.

Using Video Rentals for Educational Purposes

Many homeschoolers study a particular theme or subject at a time, and the judicious use of videos can really help foster learning in a more visual way for children who have varied learning styles. Since we live in a town with very little to offer in the way of video rental places, Netflix has been a blessing.

Some people like the convenience of mail-in video rentals and other people enjoy avoiding late fees. The rates are usually very reasonable, and if you use the program a lot like we do, you get your money’s worth out of it. The key, however, is to plan just a little ahead.

My kids love the animal documentaries, science shows and educational programs. I’ll search about a week in advance to see what videos are available related to next week’s planned unit study. That way, my videos arrive in time for my kids to use them. At any given time, we have two or three videos in the house–one that’s being returned, one of this week’s topic and one just coming in a couple days before the next unit begins. By rotating the videos you have like this, you’ll always have something ready to go for your kids on one of those rainy days that just requires a nice, quiet, but still educational, activity.

Angela England lives in rural Oklahoma with her husband and soon to be four children, where she works as a professional blogger in addition to homeschooling, doing childbirth work and massage therapy. England is the founder of The Untrained Housewife – a social site for homemakers, mothers and homeschoolers to exchange back-to-the-basic tips and tricks.

“FREE Flashcards”

If you like using flashcards, you know all too well how easy it is to quickly run up a tab when purchasing them! They can easily run anywhere from a $1 a pack to over $5 a pack, and one pack is never enough. You “need” a pack for this and for that and for the other thing. You’re quickly swimming in a sea of flashcard frenzy!

Having seen the price for a pack of flashcards, I quickly decided there was no way I was going to pay the price they were asking when I could easily create flashcards for my daughter with little to no cost at home. What could cost me up to $5 (or more) to buy, I can easily do in as little as ten minutes at home.

How do you make flashcards for FREE? Grab the following supplies and do these quick and easy steps to create your very own free flashcards!

Supplies needed:

• Empty cereal box (or other cardboard)

• Marker

• Scissors

• Bag or rubber band (for storage when you’re done)

(The example in the pictures is for matching numbers to their names.)

The Process:

#1 – Open the cereal box and use the inside “blank” part to write on.

#2 – Use the marker to write/draw out the text/picture you want on the flashcards.

#3 – Use the scissors to cut apart the flashcards.

You’re DONE! See how easy that was? And free, too!

The best part is that when your child loses them (and we all know that flashcards seem to disappear into thin air), you aren’t out any money and you can easily replace them for free!

I’ve used this idea to create puzzles, flashcards, matching games, and more. The sky’s the limit!

This post was written by Ashley P., homeschool mom and Lesson Pathways team member.