One of the things we do in our home/microschool is to have what we call “fun days.” For us that means that we put away our normal work and lessons for a day of learning fun. When and how often we have a fun day is determined by how diligent the kids are at getting ready in the morning and getting their work done without getting in trouble.
I really enjoy planning and carrying out our fun days. It gives us all a needed break from the routine. Today I’m going to walk you through planning and carrying out our most recent fun day.
Preparing for a “Fun Day”
First, I had to find a theme. I like to think about what we’ve been studying so that our fun day helps them make connections. Since our history studies lately have been about colonial times, I used that as my theme this time. I got out my history books to see what they had to say. I looked online and found a couple websites that had color pages, lists of tools and objects that were normal then, and colonial time recipes. Next, I hit the library for some more information and childrens books I could read to them. I wrote down ideas as I went along.
After I wrote down my plan from my ideas, I collected all the things I’d need. I found craft materials, and printed some color pages. I asked my little guy if I could borrow some of his toys that would fit perfectly with our fun lesson. And this is how it went:
The fun day in motion
First, I read them a book called “Kids in Colonial Times” to give them an idea of what it would have been like for a child to live then.
Next, we walked around to the colonial color pages I had taped on the wall, where they told me what they saw in the pictures, and we talked about it.
Then we gathered sticks to try to build a mini log cabin, but that failed. 😬 I had done that with my kids a few years ago, and it turned out really well. I’m not sure what went wrong this time, but the sticks would not stay in place with the clay. Maybe I should have looked up the instructions instead of trying to do it from memory… 😆
After that, I had the kids write a sentence starting with “If I lived in the colonies…” (The youngest ones told me their sentences and I wrote them, then they traced my writing.) It was fun to see what they came up with.
We got down the color pages to color them, made whirligigs, and practiced some simple needlepoint.
They each made a hornbook and studied it. I hadn’t known until this fun day prep that a hornbook was what the kids commonly used to study in school during colonial times. Though theirs were made on wood, we just used cardboard and glued a printed alphabet and verse to it.
After a lunch break, I read them a book called “Tapenum’s Day,” about a Native American boy in colonial times. I hadn’t planned on adding this perspective, but when it popped up on the library search, it felt good. After we read it, we practiced hunting with our toy bow and arrow. I drew some animals on our whiteboard, and we shot arrows with suction cups on the end. It was harder than we thought!
Then we talked about corn and how important it was to both groups of people. We looked at pictures of it online and talked about what we like to eat that’s made from corn. Then we used some ground corn and made some Johnny cakes to taste. The kids were not impressed. 😆
What a fun day, even with some fails in there! I hope the kids made some good connections from our activites to our studies. I also hope they remember this line in our last book from a wise older Native to the young boy, “There is enough for all people.”
Thanks for reading my post! For more ideas about fun days see Fun days and Field Trips. I hope you’re enjoying your adventure.
