Here's something we've been having fun with. When "The Lady" came to visit a few weeks ago, as I shared in a recent post, she gave us a great booklet full of ideas to get our brains working in more unusual ways than usual, a bit like a mental work-out. It's called "Thinker's Keys" and one of the exercises is called, "The Commonality" You decide upon 2 objects which would generally have nothing in common and try to outline some points of commonality between them.

Because of the time of year it is, we used their suggestion from the Christmas category. Find the commonality between blowflies and wrapping paper. At first the kids were saying, "Those two things have absolutely nothing in common," but after a good brainstorm session, I was surprised by what they came up with. Here's the list:-

They both make a noise

You can find them both in our house in December

They're both annoying when Mum needs to tidy up

You may find either of them on a block of chocolate

Little babies may try to stuff either of them in their mouths

Both come in more than 1 colour

Both can be shiny

Both may be spotted in shop windows

Both can be destroyed

They have both been the subjects of songs

They can both land on you

It took a good bit of thinking to come up with all of these and in my opinion, this exercise lives up to my criteria for fun homeschooling ideas. In case I haven't outlined this criteria before, they should be simple, should require minimal setting-up time, should be fairly challenging and should be enough fun so that it doesn't occur to the kids that it may actually be classified as "work".

Here's another one. Find the commonality between a woolly mammoth and a pair of scissors (from "Dinosaur" category) At first we thought that one would be even harder but Logan and Emma were in the groove by then. Without giving the whole list, they thought of things such as,

Both may be unwelcome at an Art Gallery

Both may injure your flesh

You can't run with either of them

Both have sharp parts on them

We often have a few arguments. Emma suggested that both may have fur and Logan objected that scissors don't have fur. She argued that some people may sew fur covers for their scissor handles and he said that he's never seen scissors with fur handles in his life! Then Emma got mad at him and Logan said, "But she's saying silly things," and the exercise wound up soon after that. It still got the thumbs-up from me. One of the things I've learned over the last few years is that disagreements are a fact of life and bound to crop up, whatever we're doing. I can only attempt to "Keep Homeschool Fun".