Posts Tagged ‘lesson plans’
Back to School Tips – Downloadable workbooks!
Getting ready for back to school means having lesson plans ready to go. A great asset to you lesson plans is downloadable workbooks.
Ebooks are quick to download, ready when you are, no problems with out of stock or out of print resources. Ebooks are broad ranged or specific so they can be used for review or in a theme study. Downloadable workbooks let you print only the pages you need, as many times as you need them. There are thousands of titles available and even a chance to preview some of the pages before you buy!
All you need is internet access, a computer and a printer and you can have thousands of books, workbooks and theme units at your fingertips!
Oil Spill – an environmental lesson plan
Everyone has heard about the BP oil spill that resulted from an oil rig explosion in April. Although the flow of oil has now been capped, the repercussions have only just begun.
Nature and the environment are a great Science lesson. The oil spill can add to this lesson by showing the damage that occurs when the delicate balance is destroyed. Incorporate geography so kids can see where the spill occurred, and track the waterways that may show evidence of the oil spill. Create science experiments that show how oil and water react together and try to figure out ways to clean the oil from the water. Create a project about sea life and what kinds of animals are affected by the oil spill, directly and indirectly. Even an economic lesson plan could be created to identify the loss to the local fisherman and other water based businesses.
It is easy to lay the blame on the company and its slow reaction to the problem, but discuss with the students what they might have done. How long would their ‘fix’ take to implement, would it work? Obviously the oil spill is a disaster but more time should be spent on solving the problem and preventing it from happening again then on what could have been done better.
Current events can make great lesson plans and keep students up to date in the world.
Making Mountains out of Mole Hills
So, the first mountain you have climbed led you to the decision to homeschool your child. It sure was an uphill battle but at last you have reached the top and feel accomplished.
So now, your child would like to learn about car mechanics, or magpies or even mustard plants. But you don’t know about any of those things! In this case, there really isn’t a mountain to climb. It is just a little hill that can easily be reached by a little reading and research. Look to the library for books on the subject, or find some unit studies and workbooks to help you plan a lesson. Ask people in the neighbourhood or family that have had experience with the subject and just get in there and learn it together!
Homeschooling does have its share of mountains to climb, but teaching subjects that are unfamiliar doesn’t have to be one of them. You may be surprised how much you learn, and enjoy learning in the process!
A Picture is worth a thousand words
Pictures and photos are great tools to use in lesson plans.
Not only can you incorporate a photography or art lesson, but you can also bring in science, english, history and more. Have the student create a photo mosaic of a field trip or family vacation, this could include, maps, postcards, photos and drawings about the event. Use photos to tell a story, photos can be a great way to inspire creative writing. Cut out pictures from a magazine and write a poem about them. Use pictures to create a historical timeline, this can help create understanding of the flow of events as well as create memory aids to remember the important time period. Use drawings to create a gadget or new invention, then write a description about how it works. Take a photo of a plant and then label it with the various parts. Use photos to make flashcards, a memory game or a scrapbook, familiar pictures will have more meaning to the student and keep their interest level high!
Sequencing, following instructions, creative writing and even math concepts can all incorporate pictures, a personal way to learn and much easier for the visual learner.
Music is a great learning tool for the classroom. It is especially useful for auditory learners.
Music can be from sounds of the orchestra in an actual music lesson but can also be incorporated into other subjects to help remember important details. School House Rock did a great job of incorporating music into lessons to teach about grammar, government and more. After all these years I can still remember the songs!
Sounds are as effective as songs. Having a beat to do multiplication tables can be quite useful. Clapping out syllables or tapping through spelling words can all generate a type of music into the lesson plan. Not only does it help kids remember the information, but it can keep kids moving too.
Try music with dance for a bit of exercise or a fifteen minute break. Music helps soothe the body and the dance can help get some anxieties out. Bring music into the science lesson by learning about sound waves, the ear or how animals use sound. Bring it into history by learning the background of different instruments, the biographies of various composers or the history of the different genres of music. In English you can analyze song lyrics, or write you own songs. And you can bring it into art by drawing while listening to music to feel the music and interpret it into a picture.
Combining music with each subject is an entertaining way to make the lessons more sharp and less flat!
Project Fair – an educational amusement park!
Projects are a great way for kids to learn. They involve research, investigations, writing, drawing, experiments and more.
Combine as many subjects as possible to a project for a cross-curricular lesson. For example, a clay rendition of a frog’s life cycle (art/science), a field trip report on a visit to a pond (geography), a graph as to how many frogs were counted at the pond (math), a book report on a story about frogs (english) and so on.
Make the project ready for display and have a little project fair so your student can share their work with others (can be with family, friends or join in with other homeschoolers.) You can make certificates to award for certain topics – scariest topic, biggest project etc. Presenting their project in a fair style encourages them to express what they have learned as well as giving them an opportunity to speak in front of others. It will give them a feeling of pride for their accomplishment as well as allow others to offer encouragement and appreciation for the work.
A project lesson can take several weeks – time spent learning and having fun!
Mneumonics – helping kids remember
Mneumonics are memory aids. They can be rhymes, acrostics, acronyms and other devices to help remember key facts. They are especially helpful to auditory learners.
Remember the rhyme about Christopher Columbus we learned in school? In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I will always remember the year he discovered America thanks to this rhyme.
What if you needed to know the line up of planets from the Sun? Create a sentence using the first letter of each planet to start a word in the sentence. For example: My Very Excited Mom Just Started Using New Pillows. The first letter of each word in the sentence represents the planets and all the words in the sentence show us the order of the planets. This is a good technique to help remember the order of many different things.
Acronym is an abbreviation of several words in such a way that the abbreviation itself forms a pronounceable word. For example SCUBA stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. This is another way you can use to help remember important things – such as the Great Lakes – use the acronym HOMES to identify Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior.
Mneumonics are fun to use to show differences in similar words. Stalactites and Stalagmites are similar words, both representing formations of rock within a cave. StalaGmites has a G in it so it represents the one that grows from the Ground and StalacTites grow from the Top.
Encourage children to make up their own rhymes, acrostics, acronyms or other memory aids – they will remember them better that way.
What is a unit study?
A unit study is a set of lessons, worksheets and more on a specific topic of interest.
Each topic provides comprehensive, cross0curricular activities to inspire and educate a child in science, social studies, language arts, math, fine arts and more.
They can encompass various learning levels making it useful to teach more than one child at different learning levels. It can work well with different learning styles because it offers a variety of lessons that focus on each learning style – an art lesson for the visual learner, a field trip or science experiment for the kinesthetic learner and a poetry or rhyme section for the audio learner for example. Since each lesson is based on the same topic it can give options on how to study the topic that best suits each child.
Unit studies can be downloadable which saves money, time and the environment since you only print the pages you need. They can provide fun and learning for your child and encompass puzzle sheets to “reward” children for finishing a more challenging exercise.
There are no rules, that is the beauty of homeschooling. Working one-on-one with your child will allow you to determine the best way for them to learn, and then you can teach it appropriately.
If your child does not like to read, offer stories in comic book form, you can get classics, Shakespeare, even the history of the world in this form. Comics break up the words with pictures making reading easier for reluctant readers.
If your child likes hockey bring that into your lesson plan. A unit study on a specific subject that the child likes not only covers the curriculum but also inspires them to learn because they are learning about something they are interested in.
If your child is an auditory learner, work in some audio books, computer games and music to the lessons so that they have the best chance to learn. Likewise, visual learners and kinesthetic learners can be taught to their learning style.
If your child is struggling with a concept, or is not liking a particular subject, tweak it so that the lessons will be more interesting, or easier for them to understand.
With homeschoooling you can take the time to determine how best to teach lessons to your child. You can cater to their interests, their likes and their dislikes. You can make education fun and important to them – that should be the only rule!
Lessons for spring – it’s a walk in the park
As the spring season meets us there a many chances for lessons in nature, science, health and more all you need to do is take a walk in the park (or neighbourhood, woods etc.)
The coming of spring brings a change in weather (Science), brings birds back to start their families (nature), creates new blossoms from the barren ground and trees (ecology) and brings sights, sounds and smells to inspire poetry (English).
When you take a walk in the spring, take your time. Look for new signs of life, listen for birds to identify and feel the warm winds on your face. Plan a garden, do a nature craft or learn about the power of the sun.
Get outdoors in the spring because you will find a lesson everywhere around you!