Once I turned homeschooling into a more hands-on environment, we’ve had a ton more fun with our schooling. If your kids are stuck in a desk doing worksheets, check out some of the amazing reasons I share below to approach homeschooling HANDS-ON.
You should make your homeschool learning hands-on because
- Playing Skip-Bo for math helps time passes quickly.
- Making pancakes for math class is delicious.
- A rock collection becomes an important part of math class.
- Learning about animal tracks will require a search outside in the mud or snow.
- Early addition is more tasty with marshmallows
- You have always wanted to make a paperclip chain that is 100 long.
- Having a reader’s theater event with friends is a memorable way to first learn Dickens.
- Making the turkey dance inspires you to finish sorting blends.
- Playing a game makes practicing short vowel sounds fun.
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“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” John Dewey
- Having a field trip to an apple orchard teaches more than just reading about apples.
- Playing with Banagrams and Scrabble tiles helps solidify spelling rules.
- Putting landmarks on a giant U.S. maps helps you remember better.
- Traveling the Silk Road with Marco Polo yourself teaches you about ancient trade routes.
- Making your own Archmedian screw teaches a lot about simple machines.
- Clip cards for learning compound words train fine motor muscles as well as the subject at hand.
- Cutting and pasting CVC images helps build word family awareness.
- Putting rhyming dust bunnies in a bag helps bring a favorite picture book to life.
- Having an egg hunt when it’s not Easter helps prolong the holiday, even as you practice reading skills.
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“We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.” John Holt
- Sorting flowers with images into word family flower pots is a physical activity.
- Recycling your own paper helps you understand the need to recycle and appreciate smooth paper.
- Imitating an award-winning artist’s scratch art style of illustration helps one appreciate the art type more.
- Doing your own water displacement experiment makes the story of Archimedes and the crown more clear.
- Making your own paper airplanes helps one learn about aerodynamics without having sit and read about it.
- Designing and writing your own thank you cards is better than boring copywork.
- Building with apples is a tasty way to learn about structural engineering.
- Designing a bridge brings engineering to life (and helps one appreciate how hard it is!)
- Building a sentence in Spanish is a satisfying way to recognize one’s learning.
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“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” George Bernard Shaw
- It’s more fun to pretend you are in a coral reef escaping a barracuda than to read a book.
- Designing a flower garden is an imaginative way to practice learning area and perimeter.
- Playing a high-speed matching and swapping game to learn about biomes makes the distinctions clear.
- Using a ten-sided die to practice baseball multiplication is perfect for a sports enthusiast.
- Making it rain in the kitchen is a wet way to learn about the water cycle.
- Programming your own robot teaches essential 21st century skills.
- Balancing like the Cat in the Hat is a clever way to learn about the center of gravity.
- Learning about core sampling is memorable when it requires playing in play dough!
- Learning about scale models while making a LEGO model of your bedroom can only be described as fun.
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“Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” Diane Ackerman
- Stamping out spelling words requires more carefully thinking before spelling.
- Making a giant food pyramind on the floor helps one sort foods in to categories.
- Learning fractions with pizza makes fraction learning practical.
- Selling pretend lemonade is a fun way to practice all sorts of math skills.
- Keeping track of events with passport stamps creates a memorable keepsake.
- Finding a treasure on a treasure map teaches the practical skill of reading a compass.
- Making compound words using “bon-bons” is great for visual learners.
- Painting a scripture story brings it to life.
- Practicing double digit subtraction with a competitive card game is less boring for students.
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“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” Mr. Rogers
- Playing “Guess Who?” with famous explorers requires careful thinking and comparing.
- Floating and sinking items in water is a wet way to learn about a basic science concept.
- Doing laundry and cooking dinner are the most practical things to learn.
- Tossing a beanbag into a muffin tin helps practice reading skills, as well as gross motor practice.
- Interviewing family for a project creates lasting memories
- Praying in Spanish is a useful way to practice speaking a foreign language.
- Adding liquids to a clear jar is a messy way to learn about layers of the atmosphere.
- Sorting living things into “kingdoms” makes distinctions clear.
- Slapping flies with a fly swatter is a fun way to practice multiplication facts.
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“Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.” O. Fred Donaldson
- Writing difficult spellings in a word journal creates a reference to use in the future.
- Watching the clouds and tracking the clouds teaches about weather predicting.
- Counting with gold coins makes the Leprechaun’s treasure at the end of the rainbow seem real.
- Hopping on numbers makes math practice into an active time.
- Climbing in and out of a box and over another person teaches prepositions with lots of laughter.
- Feeding an ABC monster keeps a toddler or preschool busy.
- Making a skeleton out of q-tips teaches about major bones in the body.
- Playing with apple mini-erasers solidifies one-to-one correspondence learning.
- Sorting bears and frogs by color and size helps little ones learn basic skills.
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“Life is more fun if you play games.” Roald Dahl
- Making a rice I Spy bag helps little ones practice visual discrimination.
- Making an A to Z box teaches the alphabet’s first sounds in a visual and kinetic way.
- Making footprints in flour helps a child visualize the first steps on the moon!
- Going for a walk in a pool noodle covered wagon makes the pioneers’ historic journey seem real.
- Putting favorite characters into their habitats is an early science lesson.
- Sending plastic frogs hopping provides measuring practice.
- Walking quietly on tip toe gives a child important gross motor practice (plus the parent a few minutes of quiet!)
- Holding a backyard circus is great exercise plus it helps kids imagine.
- Wearing fairy wings, antenna, and a party blower teaches a little one about butterflies.
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“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Playing with kitchen tongs can teach about greater than and less than.
- Acting out the Rapunzel story requires building a tower of LEGOs.
- Writing in the snow is sensory fun as well as early literacy practice.
- Making your own ABC community helper booklet is even more fun than reading one.
- Learning about vegetables should be a sensory activity.
- Learning about moon phases should require dancing.
- Understanding the global nature of the world needs sidewalk chalk.
- Laundry day should include a science lesson about hermit crabs.
- Playing dominoes is perfect for name recognition or sight word practice.
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“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn.” Benjamin Franklin
- Learning about instruments can be imagination play.
- Leaf rubbings are a perfect autumn craft.
- Egg cartons can be recycled for literacy practice.
- Rubber ducks are for counting practice not just for bath time.
- Nerf guns make lessons more fun.
- Making a backyard-sized timeline puts historical events in context!
- Paper mache messes make for memorable learning.
- Sight words are more fun when playing with cars and trucks.
- Math games are fun for all ages.
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“We learn by doing. Brains are wired through hands-on interaction with the physical world.” Kevin Mitchell
Want to see more lists of homeschool reasons? Check out the iHomeschool Network blog today!
