Hands-on Learning Archives - Growing In Grace

Homeschool Nature Club: nature study resources for all ages

April 13, 2023Tracy

I love nature study, and I have loved doing it with my kids over the years. However, I’ll be honest, it’s one of those subjects that I have the most guilt about. I love it, but it doesn’t always fit into our week. I love it, but I don’t always know how to actually get it done. And, as my kids have gotten older, a lot of the nature study resources haven’t “grown with them.” A lot of what is out there for homeschool nature study is geared toward the younger kids. The result is that our love for nature study, particularly my teenagers’ love for nature study, has kind of fizzled out. I wanted to find something that would appeal to my older kids, or at least my fifth grader, and would help me pursue nature study successfully for myself.

So when I was given the opportunity to review the Homeschool Nature Club membership, I was absolutely thrilled. First, because it looked like the perfect solution for providing whole-family nature study courses, with “mature” nature study resources for my older kids. And second, it felt like coming full circle, as this membership website is the new and improved platform for the nature studies (originally written by Barbara McCoy) that were our very first introduction to nature study 10 or more years ago.

And let me just say at the start here, I have loved this nature study membership as much for myself as for my kids.

Hands-on Homeschool Language Arts curriculum: review & giveaway

May 20, 2020Tracy

We’ve recently finished the entire Nessy phonics program, and I’ve been on the search for a grammar and writing program that fits the parameters of my son’s personality and dyslexia struggles. His learning style is humor, (and no, you won’t see that on any learning style list, but trust me—it’s a thing). That was one of the key successes with Nessy for him; the humorous videos helped him to finally remember the phonograms we’d been struggling to learn for a while. For grammar and writing, he needed something visual, humorous, and creative—a hands-on homeschool language arts curriculum that was fun.

Finding Guest Hollow’s Language Arts program was like having someone read my mind. Her Beowulf’s Grammar activities and lesson plans are full of picture books, drawing lessons, finger puppets, and projects tailor-made for my son.

(Disclaimer: I received elements of this program for free in exchange for an honest review. I was not compensated for a positive review. All opinions are my own.)

5 Surprising Benefits of Teaching Typing Early

October 23, 2018Tracy

For each of my kids, I’ve started teaching typing early, as soon as they’ve got the basic idea of letters making words and words making sentences. Why so early? Shouldn’t I just focus on reading and writing?

Teaching typing is my stealth-mom way of sneaking in a few reinforcing lessons to all that I’m teaching them in reading and writing; it’s kind of like sneaking the veggies into the pasta sauce. Here are the 5 surprising benefits I’m sneaking into their day by teaching typing early.

5 Surprising Benefits of Teaching Typing Early

Ideas for a Skills-based Summer

July 6, 2018Tracy

Over the years, we’ve done a variety of things during our summer homeschool months. Kids with ADHD need structure, and while I’ve usually offered a break from our core subjects, we usually do something over those summer months to provide a structure. Some summers, we’ve focused on those subjects and activities we didn’t have time for during the school year: hands-on science, music appreciation, art, and nature study. But another fun option is to focus on skills. A skills-based summer can look different for each family and each child based on their ages and interests. The goal is to evaluate what sets of skills you want to work on and create a structure to help you strengthen those skills.

Ideas for a Skills-based Summer

100 Hands-on Ways to Homeschool

November 6, 2017Tracy

Homeschooling ADHD and dyslexia is just another way of saying that my kids are highly active, easily distracted learners. And while worksheets often seem like a time-saver, by the end of the struggle it has rarely saved us any time. Which means, I need to be constantly thinking of hands-on ways to tackle learning. Or, I put their ADHD creativity to good use and allow them to come up with the solutions for me. The result — over 100 hands-on ways to homeschool!

Just because a child is a “hands-on” learner, doesn’t necessarily mean he likes all the same hands-on options. One of my kids loves drawing and drama, another child loves songs and puppet shows, while the other loves crafts and cutting and 3-d Models. So I’ve organized these ideas by interest, that way you can quickly scroll down to the type of “hands-on” that your child enjoys.

100 Hands-on Ways to Homeschool

5 hands-on ways to homeschool Geography

September 11, 2017Tracy

It’s sometimes hard to engage our busy learners in the study of facts. So many of the traditional methods of teaching a subject are just not a good fit for our movers and shakers. Thankfully, geography is one of those subject areas that lends itself to a lot of variety and hands-on fun. There are so many ways to teach geography in your homeschool, but here are five of my favorite ways to teach geography to my busy learners.

5 hands-on ways to homeschool geography

Create Clay, Salt Dough, or Cookie maps. We homeschool geography in a variety of ways, but getting our hands dirty with clay or dough is always a sure winner for my active, creative ADHD kiddos. When we studied Egypt, we took sugar cookie dough and sculpted the country of Egypt, complete with a frosted Nile and colored sugar sprinkle dessert. (This was pre-ADHD diet, but something that could be easily modified for food sensitivities.)

Six years later, we still love to create maps this way. This year, we began our geography by sculpting imaginary lands and geographic features in clay. I handed them my Geography from A to Z picture glossary, let them choose their favorites and include them in a map of an imaginary world, and then create that world out of clay.

Read Living Books. Reading about places around the world and connecting a story to a place is a powerful way to homeschool geography. Read about children, animals, or fairy tales from around the world. For instance, for one unit study early on in our adventure, we read the children’s adapted version of Around the World in 80 Days and followed our read-aloud on our map. How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World is another fun book that teaches geography with ingredients and a recipe!

Another of our favorites are the Legends and Leagues series. I usually start my kids in the original series in first grade, when they are old enough to read fairly well independently. The other Legends and Leagues books (North, South, East, and West) I usually assign a couple each year. These geography living books are silly, funny, and engaging. If your child likes Life of Fred math, he will enjoy Legends and Leagues.

Sharpen Map Skills by Drawing. Instead of the facts of where a country is located, have your child learn the skills of map reading and map making by drawing his own— of his bedroom, of your neighborhood, of a trip to the park. Depending on your child’s age and ability, have him complete the activity with map keys, compass rose, or grid locations.

Get hands-on with maps (literally). Rather than a map on the wall, I’ve opted for some more hands-on map variations through the years. One year, I printed an enlarged map that we’d been studying and glued it to a poster board, allowing my son to both color the map and then enact the story of Hannibal with his toy soldiers on our enlarged map.

We’ve done the beach-ball globe for quite awhile, which my kids have loved to toss around as well as look up countries we are reading about. And just last year, we added our new favorite, the scrunch map. This map is such an unusual texture. The kids love to spread it out on the floor, laying all over it to find what they are looking for. And equally as much fun is wadding the map back up and scrunching it back into it’s little bag. My kids are literally all over a map, and this close up sensory exploration fuels their love for learning geography.

Pray around the World. A simple way to homeschool geography is through praying for the world. Unreached people groups, current events, persecuted Christians—there are so many opportunities for our children to learn about the world around them through prayer. One of my favorite activities with my kids is to get out our scrunch map and have them pray for a country with their fingers on the location. Adding that little bit of extra sensory input really helps to engage my busy kiddos. We read about the country, about the people, about their struggles, and then all together touch the country on our map and pray for it.

Geography is a fantastic way for your hands-on learner to explore all of their world with all of their senses. Let them read, imagine, and create. Let them use their imagination to better understand the real world, every feature of it. And as they gain a love and appreciation for their world, they will also be fueled by a desire to discover more about that world.

Dragonfly Summer Nature Study

August 7, 2017Tracy

I love how summer learning kind of takes on a rhythm of its own. We don’t have any formal “school” going on just yet, but as we wrap up this season, I’ve loved watching spontaneous learning just happen. And nature study is one of my favorite ways to watch learning happen naturally. It’s such a fun activity to encourage curiosity, exploration, and research. This summer, we’ve been noticing dragonflies and damselflies. The result has been an informal dragonfly summer nature study that has lasted all season.

Our Dragonfly Summer Nature Study

It all started with a dragonfly on our outside patio.

dragonfly summer nature study

As we “oohed” and “ahhed” over it, I asked the kids if they knew any differences between a damselfly and a dragonfly. We consulted some nature books and Google Images and observed some basic differences: dragonflies have larger wings that spread out when at rest, thicker bodies, and eyes that are closer together; damselflies typically have wings that fold when at rest (many times, it looks as though they only have two wings), thinner bodies, and more distance between their eyes.

Honestly, my kids took it from there. We observed dragonflies and damselflies on every nature walk for the rest of this summer. They even built damselfly and dragonfly lego creatures.

dragonfly summer nature study

They watched a swarm of damselflies mating and laying eggs in our favorite pond. And they picked up a dead dragonfly in a parking lot to observe at home under our microscope.

Tips for a summer nature study (or any nature study)

Take a walk and see what catches your child’s attention.
Ask some questions and find some answers together. Google it, or check out a library book. But make sure that it’s answering your child’s questions and feeding his interest in the topic.
Allow your child to “narrate” or put the new info to use—whether that’s teaching the new info to you on the next nature walk, drawing in a nature journal, or playing with legos!

I love having a time of the year to take a break from our classical/charlotte homeschool and to enjoy some summer spontaneity. And while I’m looking forward to adding some structure back into our lives and am excited about our new books and fresh supplies, I also love that learning can happen without those lesson plans, too. Learning happens anywhere!