Looking back on my fifteen years of homeschooling, there are certain things that stand out. The memo- ries that my oldest children fondly
recall and the experiences that my youngest child requests are the ones that I created
myself. They forced me to draw on my well
of creativity because my children hated my
teaching but loved learning.
Math
Recently, my younger daughter said to me,
“Why can’t we go back to the math problem
of the day? I really liked that. That was eas-
ier than this book.” The youngest boy piped
up, “Yeah. I don’t like that book math. Can
we do some real-life problems?”
I came up with “Math Challenge of the
Day” in response to my older children’s dif-
ficulty applying the book math to real life.
I felt that if they didn’t understand how to
apply what they had learned, what was the
point of all those worksheets? Every day,
I thought up a multi-step problem that
someone in the family had recently faced.
I challenged them to figure out how many
pounds of vegetables our little garden plot
could produce. I asked them how much
paint and carpet we would need to remodel
their bedrooms. They worked together on
planning a small party using a budget I
gave them. Soon, they depleted my store of
situations, but they kept begging me to give
them more.
I invented another idea. Each of them received five dollars, and I took them to the
thrift store. I said, “See how many shirts
you can buy without going over. Remember the tax.” They loved that, too. What kid
doesn’t like money?
We also created our own active games
to practice math facts, and get some exercise at the same time. They never imagined
jumping on numbers and tossing bean bags
could help them learn math. Other tools
that I used over the years were: math riddles and secret numbers, videos and songs,
and some math literature. They especially
loved the Sir Cumference books.
Reading and Writing
When it came to reading, my two sons
learned slowly. Reading and writing are
second nature to my daughters, but they
resisted the typical writing curriculum. Being a professional writer myself, I thought
about how I learned to write. I remembered
my writing prompts from third grade. We
were given a partial drawing and asked to
complete the picture, and then write an
www.TheOldSchoolhouse.com
Learning Outside the Box
by Julie Polanco
They forced me to draw on my well of creativity because
my children hated my teaching but loved learning.
Thinking
Outside
the Box:
Discover Unique Learning
Tools to Make Learning Fun
