Looking for a homeschooling project or activity? Try some of these ideas.
1) Film a Documentary. If you’ve got a video camera, you’ve got a great educational tool. Do a documentary about something in your neighborhood: a church, a city-wide event, election day, an animal shelter, life on a farm… just pick something that interests you.
2) Start a Family Newsletter. Use your computer and printer to make your own monthly or quarterly newsletter about your family, and things that are important to your family. Add photos, make it nice, print out copies and send it to friends and relatives. Don’t forget to keep a copy to add to your scrapbook.
3) Start a Garden. If you don’t have one, start a small container garden. If you do have your own garden patch, set aside a portion as a kid zone. Let them plan the planting, do research together on what seeds to get and how to best germinate them. Keep a gardening journal.
4) Plan a Trip to a Foreign Country. You don’t actually have to go, though you might some day. The fun and educational part is planning the trip. Write it’s chamber of commerce and get tourist guides. Look up maps, calculate distances, research in books, learn to convert currency, learn a bit about the culture, language, and look up historical landmarks on the internet.
5) Cook Something. Cooking is both creative and scientific at the same time. Plus, you can eat your homework. How can you beat that?
6) Research a Holiday. Learn about the origins of your favorite holiday. Look them up and incorporate them into craft projects making holiday decorations.
7) Play Mad Libs. These are a great way to help introduce children to the parts of speech, or refresh them. Plus, they’ll have you rolling.
8) Do Things the Old Fashioned Way. Read stories set in the past, and then live a day without electricity, or make your own soap and candles, or bake bread without an electric mixer or bread maker. Churn your own butter. Learn what it must have been like for our ancestors.
9) Create a Work of Art. Take a book out on a certain school of art, or artist, and learn about the techniques… then try to copy them making your own.
10) Learn an Instrument. Even if you’ve never picked up an instrument, music is a great way to learn. Just a simple fluteaphone from the toy store will help children begin to learn musical principles and appreciate it more.
11) Build Something. Just get some scrap wood, some hammers and nails and try to put something together. A flower box, a bird house, a plant stand… it doesn’t matter what. As you get more skilled in handling tools, look for plans that are a little more difficult and progress. Building is a great way to utilize mathmatical concepts and get creative at the same time.
12) Make a Radio Show. Write a script, find some sound effect materials, and use a tape recorder to record your own “old fashioned” style radio show. Even better if it’s an historical event.
13) Make Up Songs. These can be just for fun, or write lyrics of things you have learned to go with your favorite music to help remember them. You’re homeschool house will be rockin’.
14) Watch the News. Or read a newspaper together. Start making it part of your daily routine. Talk about current events.
15) Take Things Apart. Take some old household appliances, or get some broken ones from friends or garage sales, and take apart old radios, televisions, toasters– see what parts they have in them and figure out how they work.
16) Get some Pets. Some small pets in cages or tanks, like fish, birds, mice, snakes, turtles, or even an ant farm. You can learn a lot from watching and caring for these little creatures.
17) Start a Collection. Seashells, stamps, bottle caps– it’s up to you. Do some research on the items and see what you can learn about them.
18) Check out Government Websites. The Postal Service, the US Mint, the Library of Congress– all have really great websites full of information. And they’re free!
19) Do some Kitchen Science. Get a book on kitchen chemistry and cook up some experiements on your own counter.
20) Start Eating Healthy. If you’ve never given it much thought, start eating healthier. Learn the food pyramid. Read ingredient labels. Learn what they mean. Find some healthy recipes.
21) Research your Family Tree. Find your roots. Start researching who came before you. Interview relatives, ask for copies of old pictures, letters, documents. Look it up on line, investigate the countries your ancestors came from. Maybe you’re related to someone famous, or descended from Kings.
22) Prepare for a Natural Disaster. What’s a threat in your area? Floods? Hurricanes? Tornados? Earthquakes? Research natural disasters, and plan and prepare for them.
23) Build a Model. Model ship, model car, or maybe a small scale model of your house– use legos or tinker toys if you like. It’s up to you.
24) Make a Weather Station. Look up instructions for making your own weather instruments out of simple household items, track the weather, and check the forecast regularly to see how accurate your own instruments are.
25) Hold a Cultural Fair. This can be just your family, or invite some friends. Research an interesting culture for a week. Learn about their customs, food, holidays, religion, games children play, etc., and then hold a little festival. Cook some traditional food, wear some traditional garb if you can, have the kids put on a brief oral presentation (or show off a video documentary), make some crafts together.
26) Invest in the Stock Market. You don’t have to invest real money... do a project using imaginary money and follow the stocks. See if you can reach a goal.
27) Go Green. If you haven’t already, make your house environmentally friendly. Turn it into a project, do a little research and help the planet.
28) Get Published. Start working on a project, such as a chidren’s story with your own illustrations, or about that historic landmark or your favorite recipes, and put a manuscript together. You don’t have to submit it to a professional publishing house (unless you want to). You can self-publish, have it bound at Staples or an online desktop publisher. Keep it as a keepsake, sell it on E-bay or give to friends as gifts.
29) Start a Business. Nothing could be more practical and educational– and to many kids, the prospect of earning their own money is a huge motivator! You might want to do something simple, like selling cookies or crafts to friends, or providing a service. You might also want to try getting a booth or creating your own website.
30) Learn Esperanto. If you don’t know a foreign language, start studying Esperanto, the world’s most common intentionally invented language. You can learn for free online, and learn it about 10 times faster than any other language. Best part is that Esperanto uses Germanic and Latin root words, so once someone has learned it, they can learn any other language about four times faster.
