vibeke – Page 4 – Homeschool

The Christmas Story

We love learning by doing. This year we had the idea to put together a Christmas Play, together with some other Homeschoolers. It was a good way to learn about religion, history and to work together as a group. It was also a good way to get to know some other Homeschoolers better.

Learning to spell

“You are a homeschooler if you learned to spell, playing scrabble” we heard Blimey Cow say, in one of his funny homeschooling youtube movies. Not far from the truth 🙂 Scrabble sure is a real fun way to learn to spell.

Spare time activities

How does spare time activities work together with home schooling? Fine, actually. We see it as a kind of out-sourcing of areas, that we are not capable of teaching in ourselves. Areas that interest our kids.

Through the years, we have attended many different spare time activities. Mostly, a new activity has come around like this:”Mum, what is a scout?” (Watching a movie with scouts appearing in the story). “Mum, I want to be one”. Ok, so we started looking around, to see if we had any scout groups, near by. Non of us had ever been a scout, so we had no idea either, what it was going to be about. We then found a new concept starting, where you could attend a scout group with your family, even though, you were only 1 year old. That meant we could be scouts together as a family (our kids were 5, 2 and 1 year old at that time). That appealed to us. So we ended up being scouts for 5 years. We learned that being a scout involved learning about nature and being able to set up a fire and cook lots of food over the fire. Great fun. Loads of teamwork building stuff out of wood and learning how to use a knife and an ax. Learning morse signals has been very popular here too.

Another time, one of our children said:”I want to dance ballet!” When she had said it a few times, we started to ask into why she wanted to dance ballet. She was motivated by a friend who danced ballet and she had seen her dance. So we found a class that seemed good and she enrolled. That is 4 years ago now, and she is still very fond of dancing ballet.

Store balletskoledag, Royal Theatre 2019-03-31.

One of our children have been fond of writing since she was 6 years old and have practiced and practiced on her own. When writing classes have popped up around us, she has taken part. Some has been good others not so fantastic. But it has been a learning process.

Another child has taken part in Break Dance classes.

Our oldest child has made her own writing group with another aspiring author, which she meets up with regularly to work together and exchange ideas and support each other.

One day two of our kids came to me and said:”We have found a drama school and we want to try to audition”. So I contacted the school and got them set up for auditions. It was fun for them to try, and one got in and the other child found out it was not for her to act.

We have also made use of the free offer of evening classes we have in Denmark, when the children are in 7th to 10th grade. One of our children have attended dance classes in musical dance and ended up taking part in a show. She also took part in an arts class and a physics and chemistry class through this free offer.

Recently, we have enrolled in karate classes where we can train together across all age groups and levels. Just in the homeschool spirit.

Interview with Jan Kjær

Some of the most popular children books we have read with the children, is the series “Nomerne” written by Jan Kjær. The kids will come with them over and over again, for us to read them aloud. Now they are so old that they also can read them by themselves. And they do, over and over again.

We have also met him quite a few times at Book Fairs and workshops, where he has signed our books.

So we wrote to Jan Kjær and asked for an hour of his time. He said yes, and we put together some questions about Nomerne and Jan Kjærs life, together with the children.

This new Homeschool activity of learning through interviewing people we find interesting, is great! You can see the interview below.

Interview with Jan Kjær 2019-10-31.

My oldest daughter made a box to fit the “Rumlesvampe” muffins that we know so well from his books 🙂

All the kids busy, drawing Nomerne and reading Nomerne, preparing for the interveiw.

Jan Kjær telling the children about how he works.

Fractions for fun

I caught my oldest trying to explain to our youngest about how fractions work the other day. A moment of intensity and joy. A child happy to share knowledge and a child eager to learn from the older, full of respect. I love these moments that jump out of conversations we have, and turn into very motivated learning.

Counting your money

Making learning come alive, with real life challenges, is high priority in our home school. Learning about numbers and being able to count, makes sense when you get pocket money and want to see if you have saved more than your siblings. High motivation.

Electronic synthesizer

We examined sound waves and an Electronic Circuits, by putting together a small keyboard.

The synthesizer is build around the NE555 timer chip and a resistor-ladder.

Parts

Diagram

Below is a screenshot from »Engineer’s Mini-Notebook« by Forrest Mims from 1984. This version uses a lot of different capacitors which makes it more expensive. The previous DIY version shown above is very cheap compared to this one.

Zero Waste electronics

One of our children is very fond of learning and making electronics with her dad. She is a very quick learner, 11 years old now. A friend of ours gave her this job – describe and connect all the wires and I’ll pay you a wage.

It is reverse engineering of a printed circuit board. The pieces has been reused from old electronics he already had at home or from dumpster diving.