Our Homeschooling Journey: Projects and Activities

Photo Credit: All Photos in this article are mine

Video Credit: Video links to my videos.

When you made that tough decision to engage in homeschooling, you may have felt much relief having been able to finalize your choice. However, the challenge for you is yet to unfold: How to make homeschooling an optimized opportunity for your child/children to grow holistically? The scenario can drive you crazy - now, you'r their mom and their teacher: the two most challenging noble endeavor on earth.

After completing this school year, we will be starting our fifth year homeschooling our two kids: son and daughter. I'm not going to say we're perfectly doing it but we're doing great. For these four years, we transitioned from focusing too much on academics to focusing on life skills and practical application. We tried to adapt activity-focused tasks rather than pen and paper output. Since we are enrolled in a homeschooling institution, the challenge is how to document these tasks in a better way so that we could present it for assessment. Then, we thought of setting up YouTube channels where we upload our activities - problem solved.

The tougher challenge is how to keep the activities fun while at the same time, they will conform with our homeschooling curriculum. This is the core of what I am going to share to you today.

Children Loves Challenges

Homeschooling moms and veteran teachers would agree that children can learn well if they engage in relevant activities. This is not to discredit the fact that each child have their own unique way of learning which may be sum up into three: auditory learners; visual learners; and kinesthetic learners. We will not delve into these types of learners rather, I just want to emphasize that engaging in activities will serve to optimize the learning experience of all types of learners.

We usually call our activities "challenges" thus, the titles for my daughter's youtube channel usually contains the word challenge. For example: Giant Bubbles Challenge. Children likes the idea of getting involved in a challenge. They enjoy the feeling of being able to overcome a particular challenge. Most of the videos that I included in this post are for my son's homeschooling challenges. I will be posting a separate post for my daughter's.

This was much fun for my children. Our first challenge on this matter is creating a giant bubble inside a big portable waterpool. In that activity, the challenge is to enclose the other inside a giant bubble in at least three seconds. Then, they added a more challenging task of releasing the bubble off the ring.

What have they learned? We linked this activity to the discussion on properties of matter - different components with varied proportion will affect the output. The proportion of the materials they used in the solution they created was a trial and error task until they arrived at the best proportion that provides the highest elasticity.

We likewise associated it with their topics in Math, particularly ratio and proportion.

I'm sure that your child or children's eyes will go round in amazement when they see these giant bubbles.

Then, the challenge became much more exciting - we went to a remote island which is not popular to many beach goers and created the biggest bubble we could. It was majestic! The event was captured with mavic pro drone which made it more interesting. We were so glad to review the footages during that day. We shared some of the exciting parts in the video below.

We have done several challenges using Kinder Joy Surprise Eggs but I will be sharing with you the most exciting one. You can plan for your own depending on the age of your child. For per-schoolers, you may focus on shapes, sizes and colors.

The challenge we have below is more of a physical activity. We will be crediting this for their PE (Physical Education) in addition to their other sports activities.

Note that Kinder Joy Surprise is one of the trend in kids' channels in YouTube. Thus, if you are contemplating at setting up your own channel, this is surely one that you should not miss. If you want to red more about why you should be considering to set up your own YouTube channel, I have a separate hub for that - have a look if you have time.

We have done several of these. My son had his demo on how to print on shirt using simple materials. You will be amazed to see that kids his age can print on shirts. (See the picture on the right) His aunts and cousins offered to buy the shirts he printed so we will be crediting this activity for his Home Economics and Livelihood Education project. You will find the details plus the demo video tutorial in my other hub.

He was so thrilled that he was able to print on shirts and had earned some money from it. He asked me if he could make a video tutorial and share it to other homeschoolers so they too can print on their own shirt.

Other videos included below are:

How to Make Tutu

How to Arrange Flowers

In making a good toy review, the challenge is to choose a particular toy that kids love, age range is from 2 to 12. They will present their list and we will go to the toy store and buy it together or, we purchase it online if it is not locally available. Before they come up with their list, they have to find toys that are interesting and trendy. Then, they should read the product description of that toy by the manufacturer. This will help them acquire more vocabulary and they will also improve their reading and comprehension skills. Surely, there are lots of words that they will encounter for the first time.

Upon purchasing the toy, we take their video as they play it. There is no script for what they will be saying there. They talk about what they do spontaneously. I believe that this will enhance their oral skills and their ability to deliver oral presentations impromptu.

Lastly, they will be writing a composition which will form part of their portfolio during their assessment. They usually write a narrative, descriptive or creative writing.

Below is one of my daughter's toy review.

I hope you picked some ideas with what I shared to you. Homeschooling is challenging but turn those challenges into fun-filled activities and your kids will surely thank you for divesting them of their privilege to meet other children in a traditional classroom. I listed the links to my other articles where I detailed on the t-shirt printing and other related hubs. More on our journey in our homeschooling will be posted soon so come back for more hubs. I will be focusing on our painting activities in my next hub.

See the pictures on the right, I painted the top one and I prepared a video tutorial for my painting classes for kids. It is jaw dropping that toddlers, as young as three years old, can come up with their own version of it. See the second picture. Amazing, right?