UPDATE: This year’s Hundredth Day of School Post can be found here.
I’ve really been trying to be creative with school this semester, because as we approached the holidays, Ali was completely OVER school. It had gotten boring and predictable, and apparently boring and predictable isn’t fun – who knew?
She was ready to drop out of school forever, and that was that.
So all throughout the holidays, I stressed about finding time to find fun stuff to do when we started back. And all throughout the holidays, I never got around to it.
So instead, I’ve been cramming and finding fun things to do the night before, or in some cases, the second before.
A few weeks ago (yes, I’m unforgivably late in posting this,) we had our 100th day of school. I know that 100th day of school celebrations are all the rage right now, and they did seem pretty fun for geeky number people like us.
So the night before, I asked on my Facebook Page, scanned Pinterest, and in general tried to find something that we could do with no prep time on my part, and with only 1.25 students – so everything needed some modifications.
I started our celebrations off with a ridiculously unhealthy breakfast. I’d totally meant to save this idea for snack time, but decided that starting the day off with a bang was the way to go.
I had created a 10 x 10 grid on Excel with a sequential number in each box. I found ten different small snacks in the pantry and had Ali help me line up ten of each snack on the papers.
Noah was not at all thrilled to have to wait so long for breakfast prep, so we had to hold him off by letting him snack in advance.
When finished, our breakfast* included:
- 10 Tinkerbell Gummies
- 10 Apple Jacks
- 10 Jellybeans
- 10 Marshmallows
- 10 Semisweet chocolate chips
- 10 Fruit Gummies
- 10 Colored Marshmallows
- 10 Craisins
- 10 Yogurt Raisins
- 10 Goldfish
* This meal is in no way endorsed by the FDA, NSDA, WHO, or any other governmental agency that has an opinion on healthy eating choices. It does, however, come highly recommended by six-year-olds and two-year-olds.
Ali, being the slightly-more-than-slightly OCD kid that she is, ate everything in order – except for the semi-sweet chocolate chips, for which she did not approve.
Noah brought chaos to his plate and abandoned it shortly after eating all of the fairies.
Next, we moved on to something that I should have been doing for a while (everybody does it!) but had never occurred to me: writing prompts.
The positive side of my negligence in this schooling area is that Ali thought it was COMPLETELY AWESOME and TOTALLY ORIGINAL.
Since this day, we have started a notebook for writing prompts back and forth, and it has added some much-needed originality to our conversations (aka: a break from Fairies and Princesses.)
Our last 100-Day-Themed project was an Equation Page, for lack of a better term. She loves these pages in her math book, so I took the idea, made it into a “hundred” activity, and then added fun shapes.
She especially enjoyed finding problems to “fit” the shapes.
(Clearly she needed some help in figuring some of these out, but it was a great opportunity for us to discuss all of the different ways that one could achieve the same answer.)
She declared the day to be “THE best day EVER!!” several times, and marveled at the fact that “I can’t believe that I’m liking school so much!”
Which means that variety is clearly the key to her ongoing educational happiness. Which means that I’ve got to spend much more time on Pinterest – for the children’s sake.
UPDATE: This year’s Hundredth Day of School Post can be found here.
Great ideas! I love the creativity that comes with homeschooling. I teach 6th grade (traditional public school) and I try to bring as much creativity and change in as I can, which can be very challenging with 37 kids! LOL
I promise I’m not this creative every day – and as another Rachel commented later, the pressure to be creative in homeschooling is pretty rough! :-) Most days we just do the same thing, but I really need to find more creative (and easy) ideas.
I’m impressed with your creativity….maybe I should spend some more time on pinterest too! We’re definitely at the time of the year when everyone is tired of school – including me.
I can “do school” but being creative….doesn’t happen. Help! I’m boring my kids! ;)
I bore my kids most days – it’s hard to be creative all the time!
Great job! Ha ha, to go off of what Krista (previous commenter says) I hate the creativity that comes with homeschooling :) I have three kids to homeschool and a part time job, and I always put so much pressure on myself to be the creative homeschooler. I am lucky to get the basics in, much less the “cool” stuff. *sigh* Wish there was more time . .. . . .
Thanks for the encouragement to add a bit more fun to our day!
I completely agree. Creativity Pressure is a real thing!! And I certainly don’t do this stuff every day – I wish I could!
That looks awesome! I’m interested in homeschooling so I need to make sure I have all these ideas in a file in my mind. :) I have a 1 1/2 year old so homeschooling won’t be happening for awhile.
Also, how do you have jelly belly’s still leftover from whenever? I’m pretty sure I’d down those things in one sitting, unless of course it was the warehouse, enormous size and in that case probably 2 sittings.
Ha! We tend to keep a lot of snacks around here, so some get stuck in the back of the pantry.
Ugh we are totally bored around here. I only come up w/something exciting once a week at best. :/ K hates journaling with prompts. She just doesn’t like writing at all. That’s one reason I thought the pen pal thing would be a good idea, but she still doesn’t like writing. :(
Hm. Ali definitely hated writing at first, but now she loves it. It just happened, though – I don’t know what caused it.
good ideas. you seem to always think of something great! i was actually *just* looking at pinterest for some kind of original school/quiet time idea. nada. perhaps i should look at YOUR pinterest page! the only thing i’ve done is force noah to write a sentence of whatever he’s day dreaming about. he hates it. i need a way to bring him out of his own mind…
That’s why I started the writing prompt notebook with Ali – I’ve learned so much!
Could you help translate her answers to the prompts? I think I got most of them, but am stumped on
I wouldn’t want 100…eyes?
And
In 100 years I hope I can…???
I love how kids minds work. Or how hers does at least.
Yup, she didn’t want 100 eyes, and in 100 years, she hopes she can “si ol my frins”, or see all her friends. :-)
So, I am curious: How did you decide that homeschooling was the way to go? Is the because of the schools where you live? Ali’s personality? Did you always want to? I am considering homeschooling more and more. The schools where we live now are fantastic with really small class sizes, so I am pretty happy here, but I can anticipate problems with one of my kids if we were to move someplace else. I love the 100 things page you did with her. That is awesome.
Phew – that’s a loaded question!
I was homeschooled all of my life, so I got to see the benefits (and drawbacks) first hand. I love the time savings – it takes so much less time, and there’s no homework. Ali’s personality is very suited to it – she enjoys learning very much, and our personalities mesh well.
For more detailed answers to similar questions, here’s a couple Q & A posts I did in the past:
http://www.graspingforobjectivity.com/2012/11/homeschooling-your-questions-answered.html
http://www.graspingforobjectivity.com/2011/02/answers-part-two-homeschooling.html
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Try Pi day next week. At our school – if the students collectively bring 314 or more items to donate to the local food pantry – their teacher will take a pie in the face. Fun times!
Oooh! I like it! Thanks!
I want to know why Ali wanted to throw her 100 invisible dollars…
I love the idea! Yes, pi day and St. Patty’s Day are in the same week.
For St. Patty’s, we’ve had green potatoes and eggs, and multiple other things, maybe you could make her math page green? Or in a clover?