August 14, 2007 - Top 6 Reasons to use Hands-on Activities in Homeschool
Hands-on projects and activities..............what comes to mind?
- board games, dice, dominoes, cards
- arts and crafts
- science experiments
- nature walks and nature journaling
- lapbooking
- making models and dioramas
- making costumes and performing a play
Why do hands-on projects?
Here are six main benefits of hands-on learning.
1. FUN
Children love them! (And lots of moms do to!) Doing hands-on activities increases motivation to “do homeschool.” Your children will be more enthusiastic and pay more attention to their lessons.
2. CREATIVITY
Working on a project is the perfect opportunity to highlight your children’s creative skills. Offer some guidance and lots of raw materials, and let your children be free to create an original product that reflects their own insights of the topic being studied.
Warning – Moms, be careful not to squelch the creative aspect of hands-on learning by over planning, over managing, and by unrealistic expectations. The finished product needs to be your child’s and not your own. For example, let her use her own childish drawings instead of the lovely full color images you printed from the Internet, if she wants.
3. RETENTION
It has been proven through educational research that students will have a vivid and lasting understanding of what they DO much more than what they only hear or see. Make sure that your project directly ties to learning the facts of your unit study or curriculum. As you’re creating, continually remind your children WHY you are doing this activity. The project gives them a concrete, visible foundation for learning the abstract, conceptual facts you want them to know.
4. ACCOMPLISHMENT
Persevering through a project and seeing it to completion gives your child a great sense of accomplishment! Seeing your child’s pride in a job well done is worth your trouble of organizing and cleaning up a hands-on project. (Really, it is!)
5. REVIEW
This one is wonderfully tied to the sense of accomplishment. Your children will love to look at their hands-on projects again and again. By doing so, they are reviewing what they learned! When a relative or friend comes to visit and your son pulls out his model ship, he again reviews what he learned in homeschool. This review fosters retention of the subject matter! (See, it really was worth the clean up!)
6. COOPERATION
Your children can work together on a hands-on project. Or even if you have an only child (like me), you and your child are working together. This cooperation, this working together, is what being a family is. This is why many of us chose to homeschool in the first place. Doing hands-on projects creates family memories and strong relationships.
Links to general hands-on projects
http://www.oklahomahomeschool.com/projectideas.html
These are organized by learning style – read/write, visual, auditory, kinesthetic.
Printable Math Manipulatives
http://mason.gmu.edu/~mmankus/Handson/manipulatives.htm
Make them and then use them! Double hands-on!
Make your own board games!
http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/gameboard.htm
http://frugaljourney.com/homemade-board-games/
Habitat dioramas to print
http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/online_field_journal/dr/drdt/drdtmain.html
Comments
August 15, 2007 - Don't forget recipes!
Posted by amtell
Cooking is my kids' favorite hands-on project. It's great for history,geography, science, art, and it provides excellent math practice. Yesturday, we made hard tack. Boy, that stuff really IS hard!
August 15, 2007 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Anonymous
I am and always have been a hands on teacher. I draw pictures for the kids in math, I play Quiddler for spelling...I do Bingo for....well, fun?
You post was like a well thought out thesis. I for one heartily agree. :)
August 15, 2007 - Untitled Comment
Posted by socalval
Just checking in to say hello. Hope you are having a good day. Great entry today!
Valerie
August 15, 2007 - Untitled Comment
Posted by homeschoolingmommaof4
Great post! I knew there was a reason I put up with all the mess, clean up, and crafts sitting around my house. I keep them for awhile on display and then take photos for our yearly scrapbook. They then come up missing. LOL
Have a blessed day!
JoAnn
September 5, 2007 - Notebooking and lapbooking
Posted by Fatcat
are good ways of doing hands-on work and then looking at it later for review.
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