Thursday, August 30, 2007

Homeschool the Lazy Creative Way

In an effort to completely avoid being attached to a curriculum for a year, I have stumbled across some fun stuff for us to do in school this year. Yesterday we had a scavenger hunt. The girls were supposed to work as a team, while I got some household chores done. Here were their instructions:
Find something smaller than you
Find something alive
Find something no longer living
Find something older than you
Find something that feels soft
Find something that is rough
Find something smaller than your thumb
Find something that smells good
Find something green
Find something yellow
Find a piece of trash
Find something that is beautiful

So much fun! I had them do it twice to see what they would find the second time around. They really thought long and hard about some of their selections. Then we talked about what could be cross-categorized. I do have to say that I had to tell them ahead of time that whatever they selected had to fit in the bag they were carrying ( to avoid them selecting our dogs or catching toads that would have died in the bag).

We also read a great library book 'Wings' by Christopher Myers. It is all about a boy who is ridiculed and teased for his special gift, an ability to fly. Very cool story! And full of really great illustrations. The illustrations are created by using cut out pieces of magazines and other paper to show the different values and colors. We are going to try this today for an art project.

Responses from our girls? Alea, the 8 year old - great! dodged another day of school work!
Kasi, the 5 year old - when are we doing real school? you promised I could do some HARD worksheets!

But they both had fun. And really did learn a lot.

2 comments:

TheNormalMiddle said...

OOOOH my girls would love this. Reece, not so much. He's too busy playing with trains or getting into trouble!

Thanks for the idea.

(are you an un-schooler??? :) The more I homeschool the more unschoolish I get in some areas. I still don't think I can cut loose from a math curriculum, but everything else can go!)

koinonia community said...

I am an unschooler. Last year the only curriculum I bought was Math. Never opened it. We still do sit down work some days, but NO RULES. We are flying by the seat of our pants!