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Helpful Tips & Articles for Mom

Adventures in Learning

Who says learning is dull? Children like having fun, (who doesn’t?) So we need to incorporate more fun into our teachings. There are several ways to do that.

Games: 20 questions: this is a great way to teach facts. You can find sites or books on any subject and then make a list of questions for each thing you want to teach about. For instance, say you are studying Art History. You want to teach your child about famous artists. You would go to sites or books about the artists and make a list of questions for your child to answer. Here is a site about Leonardo da Vinci: http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/, visit here to find facts about this artist and make up your question and answer sheet. You could play one of several ways, have the child answer the questions knowing the subject is Leonardo da Vinci, make a list of facts from your questions and have the child guess who the facts are about or if your child is old enough, have him or her do the research and question sheet then test you! I like the last choice as I feel s/he would absorb more information this way. Here is a site to download a FREE sample of 25 questions and answers on a variety of subjects and difficulty including science, sport, history, geography, entertainment, literature, cinema, T.V. and others: http://tinyurl.com/3kgne.

Brain Teasers: make up brain teasers for math problems.

Spelling lessons: make up a word search, crossword puzzle or hangman game using words on your spelling lists. The possibilities are endless! Here is a great website for online education games: http://www.funbrain.com/

Field trips: Kids love field trips. Learning about the oceans? A trip to an aquarium is fun. Teaching agriculture? Perhaps there is a farm nearby. You could contact the person running the farm to see if you can arrange to bring your kids for a tour. A hike in the woods can serve as both gym class and a lesson in nature.

Music: We all love music. How about adding fun to music? You know that turning anything into a song will help with memorization. Look at the Alphabet Song, who has ever forgotten how to say the alphabet after learning that song? Dry Bones is a great song when learning about the bones in the body. Even better would be to make up a song of your own together. You could do the first line and your child does the next line. Take turns until you have a full song about your subject. The sillier the song, the better! Don’t forget to have a dance session using those songs. Dancing will raise your heartbeats and increase the blood flow to your brains. Studies show that the increase of oxygen to the brain generated by physical activity improves memory and learning. Plus it has the added benefit of being great for your body and your kids will have fun while getting some exercise. There are far too many children turning into couch potatoes these days. And what better way to have fun and bond with your family than singing and dancing together.

Crafts: If your child is old enough to read, you can make placemats together. It is relatively easy to do. All you need is some clear contact paper or laminating sheets, a magazine or newspaper, some clear drying glue and construction paper. Look through magazines and newspapers and cut out articles or snippets that are about things you want to teach your children. Glue them onto the construction paper and after they dry cover with the clear contact paper or laminating sheets.

If your child cannot yet read, you can do the same thing using letters you are teaching along with pictures of things that start with that letter, clocks with different times, animals with facts, or whatever else you want to work on. For more craft ideas, click here: http://tinyurl.com/5n3tg

Science projects: Science is so much easier to learn with hands on experiments. You can go with the tried and true experiments like the electric potato. You and your child can brainstorm together to come up with ways to experiment. There are a few e-books with different experiments you can do using household objects: http://tinyurl.com/4tvpj or http://tinyurl.com/6hhzz.

History: A great project to undertake for history would be to research your family’s genealogy. You should form a new lesson around each generation of the family. Learn about great grandparents and study the Depression era at the same time. Remember to save everything for future generations and also, don’t forget to add info on you and your children. For any older generations still living in your family, this would be a wonderful opportunity for them to bond with your children. And for your children to hear straight from their mouths what life was like “in their day,” would make it seem more real and perhaps make them more appreciative of all the luxuries we have now. If you don’t know where to begin, click here for an e-book that shows you how, http://tinyurl.com/3w9bl. Creating a scrapbook to go along with this project is a wonderful idea. Collect old photographs from family members. How neat to have a scrapbook that starts out with old black and white photographs and ends with color photos? Maybe you can get some old magazine clippings from certain eras to add to the older pages. Here is a great resource for learning about scrapbooking, http://tinyurl.com/49qqb.

Math: For older children or those that receive an allowance, I think setting up a checking account is a great idea. Keeping the checkbook balanced is a good way to learn math hands on. This also gives the added benefit of teaching the value of money and responsibility. Perhaps you could set up a chart for each week where a percentage of his or her allowance will go in the checkbook, a percentage to charity and a percentage for them to spend as they wish. Change the percentages for each from week to week. Now you are teaching percentages, fractions and teaching about charitable giving.

Grammar/Foreign Language: Look for websites that have a pen pal service. If you are teaching your child Spanish, you could look for a pen pal in Spain or any other Spanish speaking country. This will help with the learning of another language, grammar, letter writing etiquette and ability as well as learning about other cultures and countries. Plus your child may very well make a wonderful life-long friend.

There are countless other ways to incorporate fun into learning. We have only scratched the surface. I hope you have been inspired by these ideas. Have fun thinking up different plans!


The Author, Tracy Catarius, may be contacted at http://www.greatestkidsbooks.com
Tracy Catarius is the owner of Mattcmama’s, a resource site for parents and Greatest Kid’s books, a site devoted to children’s education. You can visit these sites here: http://www.mattcmamas.com and http://www.greatestkidsbooks.com. She is also the editor of Kid’s Education First newsletter. Be sure to sign up for this fr*ee newsletter at the site. She is lives in Massachusetts with her husband and is the stay at home mother of one son and one daughter. She also has a personal family library of approximately 1,000 books on various subjects.

 

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