The Fun Stuff – Homeschooling Activities

So by now I realize by my posts that it seems as all we do is formal learning and not a whole lot of fun stuff since I haven’t written about it. 🙂 So here’s the post with some of the fun learning we do.

Madison started a homeschool creative dramatics class last week. She absolutely loves it. It is taught by a certified teacher and is a great opportunity for her to express her creativity and to have exposure to working in a team setting with other children.

Madison also takes a gymnastics class once a week and a basketball skills class. Basketball is new and exciting for her and she actually made a basket into a lowered hoop on her second class.

Here she is dribbling during her first class:

And making the basket in the second class:

She goes swimming once a week, has art class and religion class. She also enjoys the local library programs. I didn’t get pictures, because I forgot my phone, but this month at the library readers club they had a pirate theme where they read three books, played games and made a pirate hat, a hook and an eye patch. She had a blast! Madison also attends parent night outs and open gym at her gymnastics gym where she plays fun games, gets a ton of exercise and has fun hanging out with other children. Madison is an extrovert. She loves to socialize. All. The. Time. So it is important to her to be able to do a lot of activities with other kids.

Here’s Madison shooting a basketball into the hoop during swimming. She also likes climbing the rock wall as well as swim.

We do many activities at home as well. Madison found a geode making kit at Target. So she had a blast making geodes.

First she painted glue on the inner part of the shells and then sprinkled the crystal substance onto them so they would be covered.

Then she carefully placed them inside food coloring for the evening.

In the morning they looked like this:

And after they dried:

Madison really enjoyed making them.

We made a compass with a cork and by rubbing a needle in one direction for 30 seconds and taping it on and placing it in a bowl of water. Madison also liked taking the magnet and running it around the outside of the bowl and watching the compass ‘swim’ to wherever the magnet was. LOL.

When she found a caterpillar outside she ran and grabbed her magnifying glass to get a closer look.

And when her and her father were out in the backyard they found several of these on the tomato plants:

Which she chose to put into their own habitats and journal about.

And she discovered two of these spiders which are still intact in their environment in the backyard and she visits them daily:

Madison enjoyed learning about different temperatures by looking at a thermometer in almost freezing water and boiling water.

She also got a kick out of watching raisins ‘dance’.

We make a point to play lots of games and chess is one of her favorites.

We have been working on Music.

And she loves puzzles. When she put these together in record time I realized it was time to order more puzzles.

Unfortunately when she was almost finished with this one the cat decided to roll around and break it apart. From now on puzzles will be built on the table only…

Madison also loves to play with her American Girl dolls, Legos and has many educational games and toys that she plays with during free time. I will have to get better at taking pictures when she is having free play time.

We are also beginning Little Passports. We are doing both the World and US Editions. I will write a post on those in the upcoming months!

For more blogs on giftedness please check out the Brian Blog!