Utilizing your kids’ interests is yet another way to make things go more smoothly in a homeschool day! Using this tact can make difficult subjects easier to bear and even excite your kids about the school work. Whether you have multiple children, or just one, there are always subjects that can be hard to get through. Here are some ideas to help utilize what your children are interested in through everyday schoolwork.
Cartoon Characters
By incorporating your children’s favorite cartoon characters into their schoolwork, you can excite them about even the most boring subjects! Handwriting work sheets that have popular cartoon characters on them are a great way to get through handwriting exercises with ease. You can also use cartoon character themed flash cards or coloring sheets in addition to work sheets. You can also use books that feature your child’s favorite cartoon character to encourage reading. Many easy-readers have sets of easy reading books that are themed with a certain cartoon character (like these cute Thomas & Friends books) that will take the frustration (or some of it) out of the learning-to-read process.
Music & Songs
Using music in learning is a long practiced tool of educators. Many children can learn tough subjects or concepts or material that requires a lot of memorization through songs easily. School House Rock utilized this process to help students memorize things like The Preamble easily and pleasantly. States and Capitals, Days of the Week and Multiplication Tables are all things that have been put to song to help children learn easier and in an enjoyable manner!
Personalization
Making things more recognizable to kids and including their names in subject-work can also be exciting. Re-writing word problems to include their names, the names of their friends and family members or their pets is a great way to make math a little easier to swallow. Using the same process, you can re-write sentences to aid in sentence structuring or vocabulary work. You can also do this to make easy-to-read beginner books that talk about Mom and Dad or family pets as well. Any way that you can bring in the familiar into a child’s school work, you can get them excited about seeing their own name and make tough work less of a fight and encourage a smoother day!
Catch up on all of our posts in this 14 Day Series