- A weekly journal activity is perfect for a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning. Ask your homeschooler to write about his favorite activity during the week or the exciting activities he is looking forward to over the weekend. Journal writing in this manner helps him switch gears, either to weekend fun or back to school lessons. As his teacher, you may ask if he would like to read his journal entry to his siblings or other homeschoolers during a lunch date, but it should be on a volunteer basis, as the journal itself should be kept private between him as the student and you as the teacher so he does not write things he deems socially acceptable and will instead be honest.
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Take your homeschooler on a short field trip outside. Instruct her to collect three items from nature, such as acorns or dried leaves. Tell her not to pick or pull off any living flowers or leaves.
Once your homeschooler has each item, go back into your homeschooling area and give her acrylic paints to re-create the colors she just found outside. Before she begins, show her how to mix colors to create new colors--this works best if she has already been introduced to the color wheel.
After she has successfully matched the colors, have her create a painting using them. -
Have you ever bitten into a cookie only to realize in the bottom is burned? For a homeschool project, do an experiment to determine the cause of the blackened bottom. Use different types of cookie sheets for your homeschooler to bake cookies and she will find that different types and shades of baking sheets (aluminum, steel, nonstick) result in different cookies. When deciding on the types of cookie sheets to use, have her research the materials to find out if the different types of metal conduct heat at different rates or if they heat evenly across the whole sheet.
Then test each cookie sheet by baking cookies on each one and comparing the results. Keep the cookie type and size as even as possible by using the same dough and an ice cream scoop to drop each individual cookie and keep the same oven temperature and cooking time.
After baking, compare the color of the top and bottom of each cookie and have her write down observations on how each cookie performed on the different sheets and why she thought each result happened.
