As a home schooling mom, I have learned that “school” is all around us! The more field trips that I take, the more I see that everything that we do has some form of learning experience for us.

Take going to the Supermarket for example. When we take our kids along on a shopping trip, we can give them their own list. They can help us “hunt” for the products we need and they can also help us determine our savings. Give your child a calculator. Show them two boxes of cereal. Ask them which box would be more economical to purchase. Ask them which cereal is more nutritious. Just about every item in the Supermarket has a Nutrition Information Chart on it. During our Nutrition Unit Study my kids became very familiar with reading these charts. They saw with their own eyes how some of these foods were worthless when it came to nutritional value. The most exciting thing that they learned is that one eight ounce glass of Tampico juice has 100% of the daily value of calcium that you need!

For your younger shoppers, cut out magazine pictures of the products that you want to buy and have the kids help locate them for you. Cut out pictures of Cheerios, carrots, Ritz crackers etc., and let your kids help find them. Be sure to put “grocery shopping” under the “family living skills” area of your monthly worksheet. It counts!

What about cooking? Cooking is a wonderful learning experience for kids! For the younger kids, go to the library and check out a book on ABC cooking. Each letter of the alphabet represents something that you can cook or bake. Cooking is great to learn the science of cause and effect! What happens when we add this ingredient to the mix? What happens when these cookies bake? What makes them rise? How about math? We have all learned how important math is in cooking. Doubling a recipe is a great math project when cooking. And sure enough, kids will learn what happens when you leave out an ingredient, or don’t measure it properly.

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7

Don’t forget to include your family vacations as school! Some of our best learning experiences have been from "exploring” on vacations. In Mammoth we visited the Devil’s Post Pile and saw the amazing things that God could do with Rocks! In Yellowstone we saw beautiful landscapes and incredible wildlife including buffalo, antelope and moose. It was such a wonderful learning experience!

If your family has an international trip planned, it may prove to be the most memorable educational experience of all of their schooling. They will have the opportunity to learn about culture hands on! They will see different terrain, eat different foods, listen to different dialect, see interesting animals, etc. Trips can offer a better education than any text book alone could give them.

You don’t have to plan a huge trip to learn. Go to your local park and examine the leaves! Step into your own backyard and plant a garden, or make a booklet showing the different flower samples in your yard! Go to a friend’s house that is of a different nationality than your family and ask her to help you and your kids cook an ethnic dish! Learning is all around us! Have fun exploring these wonderful opportunities!

 

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