Hands on Experiences For Home School Children

As a home school parent it lays within our realm oftook a field trip to Basto New Jersey. The student
responsibility to make learning enjoyable, interesting andsaw how the people lived a hundred years in the past.
effective. When setting up effective home schoolThis developed new ideas and potential skills should
learning activities we should continually seek outthey be needed in an emergency when all our modern
various methods that we can creatively reinforce thefacilities are no longer functioning. As you can see in
learning modules with the actual events studied thatthis situation we blended our history lessons with a field
day. This is a far simpler task then you may suspect.trip and with our survival training. All neatly package
When home schooling my grandson, I required intogether.
addition to his various academic programs something IMath skills can greatly be increased with map reading
refer to as survival training. For example, when weand compass work while combining school work and
studied plants during his science lessons we also didsurvival training into one. Activities such as these instill a
some research on some useful herbs and medicalsense of responsibility and importance into a Child's
plants. We felt these would benefit him in his survivalsmall mind. He or she quickly learns that although they
training. As a result he ended up learning additionalare small they can also do something important and
information on the extremely useful Aloe Vera plant.valuable for the family. They learn that there are more
He quickly learned how to use it for varioussignificant items to learning then just their books. They
emergency treatments concerning burns, etc. Heget the actual hands on that is lacking in many of the
become quit skilled in its use. We did this with severalpublic schools these days.
different plants and herbs.This same technique can be successfully transformed
Another situation was in cooking. As he learned theinto many of the subjects and disciplines that the home
principles of good nutrition he was gently led into theschooled child requires to be successful both
kitchen for some practical work. Here once again weacademically and as a member of our society. Just do
combined his academic studies with some usefula little brainstorming and proper planning and
hands on work. I showed him how to make interestingcoordinating between their activities and in my case
and tasty meals from cans of food that was stored insurvival skills.
our emergency food supplies. This worked out realBe sure not to go overboard with your extra work.
good and gave him the confidence needed to safelyMake sure that the student receives the proper
cook in the kitchen.proportion of textbook training and practice in addition
Field trips present excellent opportunities to not onlyto the various survival skills training.
learn but to visualize new skills. As an example we