If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to liven up your school day, grab a bucket of sidewalk chalk and head outside. While it’s easy enough to let kids go wild and create whatever they want, consider adding some structure and hands-on education to your outdoor chalk time.
Below you’ll find activities focusing on a variety of subjects —math, science, language arts— that have one element in common; they can all be done outside with sidewalk chalk. These activities are adaptable, so feel free to use these directions as a springboard for your own fun! Modify the ideas below depending on your child’s age and ability.
Engage Your Kids with These Chalk Activities and Games
1. Chalk Sundial
In an area of full sun, draw a large circle with chalk. Mark off the center of the circle. Early in the day, at the top of the hour, have someone stand on the center mark. Then, have someone else draw the shadow that is created. At the shadow’s edge, write down the time. Throughout the day, repeat the process. You’ll see the shadow moving across the circle.
Questions to ask:
How does the sundial work to tell time?
How accurate is a sundial?
2. Math Path
Draw a large hopscotch board; feel free to extend it by adding extra boxes. Place a different number inside each box. Give your child a specific math function to solve in order to move into each box. For example let’s say you have the number 63 in the first box. Say, “Use division to get to 63.”
Make it harder:
Instead of having them solve one math equation, make them answer many to move into a box. Using the above example, ask them to use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to get to 63.
As they move along the boxes, have kids determine whether a number is a prime number or not.
3. Spelling Circles
Draw many circles across a large area of your driveway. Write one letter into each circle. Give your child a word to spell and have them move among the circles, spelling it out.
Variations:
Instead of having kids move from letter to letter, give them a specific movement. For example, “For this word, skip through the letters.”
Let your student create words from the letters in the circles. If you want to make it more challenging, have them stick to different word lengths each round, for example six letter words.
Additional Outdoor Chalk Projects
Build a Story
Write a list of random words using chalk, and have your child jump from word to word, making up a creative story as they move along. You can also do this with two people by letting them take turns choosing words but contributing to the same story.
History Timeline
Choose a period a historical figure from your history lessons and create a timeline. Include both dates and pictures. Stick figures are welcome!
Recreate a Masterpiece
Have your child choose a piece of art they love and then let them make it with chalk. Discuss the pros and cons of using chalk as an art medium.
Solar System
Kids won’t be able to draw a life sized solar system, but they can chalk one using proper ratios. Have your student do some math and measure out each planet to make an impressive solar system.
Whatever you decide to do, the main thing is to have fun while you’re learning! There are all kinds of chalk available, including neon colors, glow in the dark, and glitter. Hunt around for special chalks to make this outdoor learning activity extra special.
Field trips are great way for homeschooling families to add excitement and some real life learning to their days. Do you get out of the house with your kids?
It can become tedious to stay at home most of the day—for both you and the kids. Field trips give you all a chance to get out of the house, get some fresh air, learn new things, and interact with new people. Here are some ideas for field trips that are educational and fun.
Zoos, Wildlife Preserves, and State Parks
Most cities and towns have zoos and wildlife preserves, and you probably live within driving distance of a great State Park. Most of these places have indoor sections—a nature center, an education area, an aquarium, or (like our zoo) an enclosed rainforest habitat.
These places give kids a chance to experience natural science first-hand. They interact with animals and learn about the ones that live in their area of the world: what they eat, when they sleep, their social habits, and more.
They’re also wonderful for learning about different plant species that our local animal life depend on for survival and how human actions may be impacting them. It might be helpful to look online to see what these places offer and then write up a list of questions your kids have. Then help them find the answers while they visit.
Art Galleries
Even if your kids aren’t particularly interested in art, most children find galleries fun and interesting. Many even have exhibits that feature the work of child artists or have a special hands-on section where children can touch or create art. Take a look around and have your children write down the names of their favorite artists. Afterwards you can research each artist and learn more about their lives and their work.
History and Science Museums
I love taking my kids to science centers and history museums. With my age spread (2, 6, 8, 13), those types of places usually hold each of their interests for long periods of time.
History museums give the kids a look into mysterious times long ago. What child can resist a dinosaur, caveman, or ancient Egyptian exhibit? Not only can they see how people lived in times past, they can see first hand what prehistoric creatures like the wooly mammoth or the saber tooth tiger looked like.
Science museums usually give kids an opportunity to learn about science by seeing different scientific principles in practice. They may be able to learn about pressure and the effects of gas by launching a bottle rocket or about lasers by using mirrors on a grid. These museums also have seasonal exhibits that are sure to excite your kiddos, so check with yours often to see what they offer.
Follow up your trip to a museum with a visit to your library where you check out books for further reading about whatever your children are still curious about.
Indoor Play Zones
When all else fails, call ahead to an indoor play zone, a laser tag facility, or a trampoline or bounce house building. They may offer group rates, and you can put out a call to your homeschool groups and coops to have friends meet you there to let the kiddos blow off steam and let the mamas have some important adult conversation. Even the indoor playground at McDonald’s and a friend and her kids meeting for a late lunch has done wonders for my sanity. Try it out.
Colleen is a former teacher of gifted children who hoped for nice, average kids. Since things never quite work out as planned, she now stays at home to homeschool her highly gifted kids, trying desperately to stay one step ahead of them while writing about their adventures {and messes} at Raising Lifelong Learners. You can find her avoiding housework by playing on the trampoline or going for hikes with her kids.
To say my son is not a big fan of reading may be an understatement. How frustrating! Didn’t he know I had big plans for the type of reader he would be? You know, the read-by-age-four-voracious-can’t put-the-book-down type of reader.
I’m a reading teacher after all! Couldn’t I just mold him into the type of read I wanted him to be? Ha! I couldn’t convince him to enjoy reading anymore than I could convince him that peas were his favorite food.
I could try. I could coerce. Prod. Reward. Punish. But I could not make him enjoy the act of reading. Enjoyment comes from within, and reading a book just isn’t his thing.
So, I was faced with a choice—force reading and torture us both, throw my hands up and surrender, or read aloud. The only clear choice—to save my relationship with my son and my sanity—was to read aloud. So that’s what we did. And what I learned along the way was beautiful.
Reading Aloud Builds Connection
Settling in on the couch with a mug of tea in one hand, a book in the other, my kids plop down around the living room. Some encircle the bin of LEGO bricks. Another sprawls, all arms and legs, into the armchair beside the window. Still another climbs into my lap and pulls her blanket up to her chin. They can’t wait to hear the next chapter in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.
Here we are, all six kids and me, gathered round a book. They giggle at my attempts to pronounce some of the ship terms, and beg me to read another chapter when I close the book. These mornings are building connection—connection between us, building our family tapestry of memories, and connection between each of my kids and the love of story.
Together we are connecting with people of different times and places, learning to walk in their shoes, even just for the span of an hour. Roald Dahl, one of our favorite authors, knew the value of story when, in Matilda, he wrote,
“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.”
Notice that he is not saying reading transported her, but books. The stories in the books transported her, not the act of decoding words. This distinction may seem like splitting hairs, but for kids who don’t like to read, it is a vast canyon.
The act of reading can be cumbersome and get in the way of the enjoyment of the story. Listening to a story read aloud can bring the story to life and create connections that silent reading cannot.
Just as a writer is still a writer if they have no use of their hands, a reader is still a reader when engaging with the story by listening. Writers connect with the world by sharing their ideas. Readers connect with the story by allowing themselves to connect with the characters and the plot.
When reading at their own level, children are exposed to a limited scope of words, as dictated by that reading level. When listening to a read aloud, children (teens and adults, too) have the opportunity to expand their vocabularies in new ways. They hear new words in context, making their meanings purposeful within the story rather than just words to be memorized on a vocabulary worksheet.
The same principle holds true for comprehension. When the act of decoding words is taken out of the reading equation, children are able to comprehend more sophisticated stories and sentence structures. Both of these lay the path for critical thinking and discussion.
When we read aloud with our kids, we experience history with them! We are there as they wrestle with big ideas. They see our facial expressions as we read a poignant paragraph, and hear our inflection as we move between lines of dialogue. From these shared experiences come discussion. When reading aloud, we have the opportunity to pause and chat about the characters’ actions, the author’s word choice, and the surprising plot twist. We are there—building language skills with our kids in a most natural and enjoyable way!
Reading Aloud—What If I’m Too Tired or Don’t Like to Read Aloud?
I get it! Sometimes sitting down to read aloud makes me yawn. I’m tired from a busy week or just plain tired of reading aloud. My voice needs a break.
The solution is audiobooks! We love, love, love audiobooks! They have kept our read alouds flowing through illness and busy seasons when we’re on the run. We listen along on our drive to swim practice or on a quiet Monday morning when we all need extra time to wake up.
I especially like to select read alouds that capture the essence of a historical time period through the added effects of the audiobook. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe wouldn’t sound the same if not read with a British accent. The lilting harmonica notes in Echo draw us deeper into the story, and Bud, Not Buddy deserves the deep, smooth voice of James Avery. Without the subtle nuances added to these audiobooks, our experience of them would have been very different.
Reading Aloud—What About the Teen Years?
Just because there are thirteen candles lit on the birthday cake doesn’t mean that your read aloud days are done. The opposite is true! Reading aloud with a teen is an adventure worth taking! The stories that they choose are meatier and almost always beg for discussion—especially when the subject matter tackles sensitive issues. Read alouds in the teen years keep learning alive when textbooks often become the norm, and the connections we made through books in the earlier years can continue to thrive.
A book-based curriculum is perfect for kids who don’t like to read and for those who do. Human beings thrive on story, and a book-based curriculum is built on just that—story! A book-based curriculum is like a well-crafted booklist, laid out like a feast, and reading aloud brings that feast to everyone. Enjoy!
About the Author
Angela Awald is a homeschooling mama to 6, certified teacher, writer, and doula. Her days brim full of learning, loving, and laundry (lots and lots of laundry)!! She believes that nurturing children (and ourselves) means helping them to see that all of life is about learning – from our mistakes, from each other, and from great books! Angela blogs at nurturedroots.net where she shares the ways she is nurturing her family and inspiration for nurturing your own.
Search homeschooling on just about any platform you can think of, and you’ll instantly be flooded with resources. Gorgeous wooden Waldorf toys, nature studies for preschoolers, vintage handwriting tablets, tricks that incorporate LEGO into reading. There are printables, book lists, and math manipulatives galore—so many options. You’ll find books and blogs all devoted to explaining the various homeschool philosophies, from Charlotte Mason to unschooling, classical to literature-based. There are all the checklists and planners and getting-started guides a parent could ever need, just at your fingertips, for when you decide it’s time to start homeschooling your little one.
But what about when you don’t start homeschooling until your child is a little older? What if you’re looking into homeschooling for the first time with a middle schooler? What if you are wading through preschool crafts and all the books that go to great lengths discussing the importance of a solid educational foundation while searching for upper grade resources?
If you have an older child and have only just begun to dip your toe into the primary-heavy world of homeschooling resources, is it too late?
(Spoiler alert: you’re not too late.)
Starting to Homeschool Mid-School Year
I became peripherally aware of homeschooling when my middle child was in second grade. I knew it was potentially on the horizon for us, but for the time being I was keeping it at arm’s length and trying to power through. I’d casually search Pinterest here and there, maybe look on Instagram to see how other families were doing it, but I wasn’t diving into homeschool research or devoting my nights to wording an educational mission statement. Until I was.
When the time came to pull my third grader out of public school, I found myself grasping at every resource I could find. I was a woman possessed, spending every waking hour (and far too many bedtime hours) Googling reviews, poring over forums for suggestions, gobbling up book lists and filling up my online carts. I was looking for anything I could find that would make this task seem less daunting. And there was a lot to be found in the lane of encouraging homeschool moms… of preschoolers.
It seemed that most websites and blogs and Instagram accounts were operating under the assumption that all homeschoolers started out as homeschoolers, and most of the encouragements and recommendations I was finding were geared towards the parent of the very young child.
Pep talks for parents teaching their kids to read.
Magical speeches about creating a lifestyle of learning from very young ages.
Passionate calls to allow children to learn through play.
References to foundations and habits were everywhere, but I had a child who had already passed all of these milestones. My child could already read, already do math, already had an idea of what learning was and very much needed to “do school,” not just play.
Was I too late? Had a foundation already been laid by someone else’s hands, with someone else’s philosophies? Could I jump in and take over the reins, or was I going to have to break something down in order to build something else entirely up?
A little of all of it, honestly.
Picking Up Where They Left Off
Yes, my son could read. We didn’t need to spend hours working on phonics together for him to develop a love of language. We just needed to find books we enjoyed reading together.
Yes, my son could already do math. We didn’t need to point out patterns in nature or count the legs of a caterpillar for him to appreciate what numbers were. We just needed to find a math curriculum we liked.
Yes, my son could write. We didn’t need to create sensory-friendly bins for him to practice letters and penmanship in order for him to communicate well. We just needed to find writing prompts that excited him.
Part of transitioning into homeschool from a previous educational setting did involve a bit of a relay, figuring out where the school had left off and running ahead from there.
The transition period allowed me to develop a homeschool philosophy that included both of us. Instead of declaring ourselves to be devout followers of this method or that, I was able to work with my son to discover how and what he wanted to learn.
Did I miss a window in his development by having someone else teach him for the first few years? Absolutely not! I was still his mother during those years, after all, and my influence was strong back then, too. He wasn’t some totally different child that had been built by strangers that I now needed to re-program, he was my kid all along, and homeschooling was just giving us more time together.
Had I been homeschooling him all along, I may have directed us down a path that wasn’t one he would have responded to as well. Had I labored over an educational mission statement when he was four, he may never have had the opportunity to tell me when he was 8 that he loved history and wanted to learn more than he could have in public school. If he didn’t know what he’d been missing, he couldn’t have known what he wanted from home education.
You’re Getting a Homeschool Head Start
When you start homeschooling an older child, you’re not scrambling to build a new foundation, you’re given the unique opportunity to work where you know the cracks are. Rather than fretting over choosing a methodology to apply to an unknown future, you have the advantage of molding a method to fit your child as you know them to be.
So is it too late to begin homeschooling an older child—a child who can already read, already write, already has habits formed and ideas sprouted?
Well, mama, you’restill learning. It’s never too late to start, and it’s almost an advantage to have waited.
So go ahead and take the leap. You may not have use for those beautiful play silks or the vintage school desks, but you’ve got a great kid who you already know, and that is the best tool of all.
About the Author
Jennifer Vail proudly lives in the great state of Texas with her very handsome husband and three very funny children. All three kids are educated in three very different ways according to their very different needs, which is exhausting but fulfilling. Jen’s hobbies include naps, 90’s pop culture, Netflix binges, buying books with the best of intentions to read them all, photography, and extroverting. She holds a degree in counseling but has found her calling by writing for and spending time with families of differently-wired, outlier kids—the square pegs of the round world.
She stays up way too late and drinks way too much caffeine, but has no intention of changing either. She is the community manager and contributing author at Raising Lifelong Learners where she writes about homeschooling gifted, anxious, and otherwise different kiddos, but also rambles at This Undeserved Life from time to time. She feels compelled to mention that she still very much loves the Backstreet Boys and rarely folds her laundry.
On social media or while talking to other homeschool moms, new homeschoolers often ask how much time they should expect their school days to take, or what subjects they should cover. Inevitably, some more experienced parents advise them to simply make sure they cover the basics of language arts and math, or tell them they don’t need to do school more than a few hours a morning during the elementary years.
Although there’s nothing wrong with thinking through a schedule—what you will cover each day and how long it might take—there’s a danger when we seek the opinions of others who may not share our view of homeschooling. We can end up with a focus on doing the minimum required instead of nurturing the natural wonder and curiosity of childhood. We begin to view school as the things we have to do instead of the privilege of inspiring a love of learning.
Thomas Berry, twentieth century cultural historian said, “Our children should be properly introduced to the world in which they live.” There’s a lot of wisdom in that statement.
The Elementary Years Are for Exploration and Discovery
When we see learning as an adventure, we can inspire our children to view it in the same way. Instead of trying to figure out the minimum of what we can do, we need to ask how we can open up the world for our children.
“Teaching is not about answering questions but about raising questions—opening doors for them in places that they could not imagine.”—Yawar Baig
Young children are naturally curious. If you don’t believe that, spend time with them and count the number of times they ask why! Their questions aren’t easy to answer either. Consider one of the most common questions, “Why is the sky blue?” How do you explain the science in a way a young child can understand?
As homeschoolers, we want to encourage that curiosity, and learning history and science during the elementary years is all about exploration and discovery.
The times, people, and places that can only be visited through books open up a world bigger than the one they know. It captures their imaginations and answers so many of those burning why questions.
History and Science Strengthen Core Subjects
Traditional education models often separate subjects into neat little boxes. It’s the way most of us who attended public or private school grew up learning. We went to English and math and science classes—often moving from one classroom to the next. The early elementary years weren’t much different except we may have stayed in the same room.
With a literature-based approach like BookShark’s, subjects aren’t taught in isolation from one another but as a connected set of skills and knowledge.
Students read about history using living books. They learn language arts skills through copywork and dictation taken from those same books. They write about what they are learning—strengthening their writing skills while assimilating their knowledge of history.
BookShark Science includes a collection of real books, not textbooks, with hands-on experiments and activities. Students use math skills such as measuring and reading charts and graphs.
As students study and practice the skills of core subjects alongside the knowledge they encounter in history and science, they learn and remember. Our brains are designed to make connections.
“As we learn something new, cells that send and receive information about the task become more and more efficient. It takes less effort for them to signal the next cell about what’s going on. In a sense, the neurons become wired together.” —Alison Stevens, Learning Rewires the Brain
History and Science Prepare Students for Future Studies
Extensive exposure to science and history will help them understand those subjects in a deeper, more complex way as they mature because they have been exposed to more concepts and scientific vocabulary.
BookShark History: The Story
Consider the etymology of the word history: “relation of incidents” (true or false), from Old French estoire, estorie “story; chronicle, history” (12c., Modern French histoire), from Latin historia “narrative of past events, account, tale, story”…
History is about story.
From the beginning of time, people passed down their history through stories. We remember stories better than a list of facts because story connects us and captures our imaginations. That’s why BookShark’s use of historical fiction and biographies fascinates elementary age children.
BookShark Science: The Spiral Approach
With BookShark science your children will learn about scientific ideas in a way that engages their curiosity in the elementary years through living books and hands-on experiments. Because BookShark uses a spiral approach, students encounter topics multiple times at more and more complex levels. Students can then build on that foundation in middle and high school years.
Your Elementary Students Need History and Science
Yes, need. Need means we require (something) because it is essential or very important.
When we see the elementary years through the lens of only what we have to study, we do a disservice to our children.
Although the core subjects of language arts and math lay a foundation of skills students use throughout their studies, history and science study speaks to the essence of who children are—curious individuals who are waiting to explore and discover the world around them. The study of history and science will strengthen core subjects as they are practiced and applied, and students will be well prepared for higher level learning.
