by Dana Masek
If you are on a typical school year schedule pretty soon you may experience the January doldrums. Getting out of bed to face the same routine gets daunting. The kids might be feeling that way too.
Try these ideas to perk things up, keeping in mind that most institutional schools rarely finish a textbook and many textbooks have large amounts of repetition. Dropping something for awhile is not going to stop the learning and might even start something really worthwhile.
- Change your routine. Do your spelling words on a window with dry erase markers (test your windows before the kids go at it). Do the same with dry, boring sentences you write and have the kids make the sentences more interesting.
- For writing assignments have them write about ridiculous subjects. For example: we’re working on paragraph writing this year so I could ask my 3rd grader to write one paragraph on “Why I would never lend my pet gorilla to my brother.” Or perhaps: “Choose 3 reasons why you feel you should be invited to perform in the circus. Develop one paragraph for each reason.” The goofier the better.
- Do your artwork taped to the underside of a chair to be like Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.
- Have a “do everything on the floor day.”
- For narration have them act out their favorite part of a story. Tell them this encourages “higher order thinking skills” which will make them very smart.
- Set a timer for 20 minutes for one subject and be done when it rings no matter where you end. Pick up where you left off the next day.
- Do science in the summer.
- Scale back for a couple weeks to the “4 R’s: Religion, Reading, ‘Ritin’, and ‘Rithmetic.”
- Go to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament together and thank the Lord for your freedom to be with your children.
- Use an incentive chart for tough subjects. Let your student draw a chart with steps that can be checked off for accomplishments. For example, my 3rd grader made a chart with a frog and many lily pads. He used to get very upset with my corrections when we worked on enunciation and expression when reading aloud. Now he checks off 6 lily pads for perfect delivery but loses a point each time I have to remind him not to mumble. He has been more motivated to do the work and I have had to correct him less. When the chart is completed he chooses from a “treat” box of books, small legos, etc.
- Switch to a different text you had planned to use sometime during the year for a particular subject.
- Time the kids as they run around the house. Now do it again and see if they can beat their own time..P.E. and goal setting.
- Bake some bread together the old-fashioned way. Read about how yeast works.
- If you just can’t seem to find time for science then read a Christian Liberty Nature Reader out loud and have the kids narrate it back. There….some science is done.
- Go to the park and see what you can see of God’s wonderful creation first hand. Ask, “I wonder why…” questions. Then go look up the answers yourself whether or not the kids are involved. Draw a picture of something you saw in your own nature notebook. More science is done.
- Take some time out of the busy day for the children to have quiet time on their beds. Mom can take quiet time to rest and pray. Get into a habit of doing this as this is one area that is sorely lacking in many people’s lives.
- Mom, pick one topic you would like to learn about and dive in. Include the kids if they show interest. For example, how about a “Shakespeare summer,” “Little House on the Prairie,” spiders, knitting, CPR, etc.
- Explore your local Cathedral or Basilica. Don’t plan a tour, just go and bask in the beauty.
- The last idea: Drop most work except math and work on a project for an outside contest for a week or two. Watch in local papers or the library for writing contests. Participate in the local homeschool science fair or History Day. Join 4-H for a year and only do a project for the county fair if that’s all you can fit in. Several families in our support group use contest projects as their main form of learning and it seems to work fabulously well for really learning how to research a particular topic in depth. (The prizes don’t hurt either!)
Dana Masek is a home educating mother of four children. The Maseks live in Shoreview, Minnesota.
