5 Days of Tips: Learning While Doing

A great way that I have found to teach is through hands-on education.  On our farm and around the house there are often projects that need to be completed.  The kids are often eager to apply math skills they are learning by helping to measure for a construction project or by making a favorite recipe.  Science can easily be incorporated into hands-on life lessons such as gardening.  Often these hands-on lessons really help to cement concepts for the kids.

Are you looking for hands-on projects to do with your kids?  Here are some ideas of things we have done

• Double a favorite recipe to practice adding or multiplying whole numbers and fractions.
• Divide a recipe in half to practice subtracting or dividing whole numbers and fractions.
• Measure, cut and build a garden box. 

• Grow some flowers, vegetables or fruits in your new garden box and learn about plant life cycles and plant parts.
• Start some seeds indoors and watch them quickly grow.
• Raise some chicks for either meat or eggs.
  • The chickens we raise for meat, we process ourselves which provides a great biology lab discovering the parts of a chicken.
  • Research what your chicks need to eat, what temperature their pen needs to be etc.
• learn about electricity by installing a new light switch or outlets.  Here is a project that Eli completed.
• Encourage entrepreneurship by helping them create a business plan and market a product.  The ideas here are only limited by one’s imagination.  (i.e. lemonade stand, bake sale, market farm fresh eggs, market a service such as babysitting or yard work…)

These hands-on lessons really seem to make sense to the kids and the make learning fun!

What projects do you have that you want to complete that would be great hands-on education for your kids?  What hands-on lessons have done with your kids?  I’d love to hear some of your ideas!

Other members of the Review Crew are also sharing great ideas as part of the 5 Days of Tips for Homeschooling Parents.  You can check out some of their blogs here:

Dawn @  Double O Farms 
Dawn @ Guiding Light Homeschool
Debbie @ Debbie’s Homeschool Corner 
Desiree @ Our Homeschool Notebook
Diana @ Busy Homeschool Days
Diana @ Homeschool Review 
Elyse @ Oiralinde: Eternal Song 
Emilee @ Pea of Sweetness 
Erin @ For Him and My Family
Jen @ Chestnut Grove Academy 

Blessings,

Jennifer