For next several days I’m going to be sharing how I teach using hands on learning. My kids are big fans of doing rather than seeing. Their favorite and most remembered lessons are hands on.
A couple of quick things to remember:
- Not every style will appeal to all kids. My boys love reenactments much more than my daughter does.
- Your house will get messy. Be willing to have a mess, but leave time to clean it up (I need to remember that last part on the cleaning).
- It doesn’t need to be long and involved. Sometimes spur of the moment is the most remembered.
- Give your kids input into the planning. If they request something try to plan it in.
What is hands on learning?
Hands on learning can mean different things to different people. For some, it’s adding in a craft or a cut and paste activity. For another family it’s throwing out the textbook and building a giant model of the Trojan Horse in their family room.
And they’d both be right.
Hands on learning engages your kids, it’s trying the paint style of a famous artist, it’s going on a field trip to see the animals you just studied. It’s creating a model of a ship. Most of all, it’s engaging your kids with the learning so they remember it.
In this series I’m going to give you some ideas of how to get started in subject areas, places online you can find more ideas, and things you might buy to engage your kids.
I hope you all enjoy this series for how to teach using hands on learning
Here’s the plan for the hands on learning series:
Hands on Learning Language Arts
That’s five days of posts on the topic. That should give you a pretty good idea of how to get started with hands on learning in your homeschool or classroom.
Can’t wait to see what ideas you have! We need lots of hands on learning over here!
I love the hands-on learning activities I’ve seen on your blog – you do a LOT!
I am looking forward to this. We hardly do hands-on schooling. J-jo gets more of it, especially for math, since he is only 4, but Bear’s workload is a lot of writing! Hoping to learn some good tips from you!
Looking forward to all you have to say! You know I’m a huge fan of hands on learning!