As homeschooling is not a one time shot activity but rather a long term process. It is frequent that parents get homeschool burnout and blocked, not knowing what new activities to include in the educational program or in the extra-curricular time. If you are a parent and caught in this rut, then you will appreciate a helpful, simple idea or two that can get you on track again. Here are a few ideas that will hopefully help:

1. Vision Boards: take a big blank sheet of paper or cardboard, stick it on a wall and invite your child to create his imagination by using drawings or images which he should put together in a collage on the dream board. If you want, you can actually have two boards: one for the reality and the second one for dreams. You can use this exercise to make the child conscious of the moments when dreams become reality, thus helping him understand what pursuing goals actually means. Make sure to offer the child a lot of material from which he can choose his images such as travel brochures, old magazines and newspapers or advertising leaflets.

2. Drama Days: organize such days in which your kids and their friends will have to produce a drama or play by themselves in front of an audience formed by their friends and families. They could recite poems, sing, dance, direct and play a puppet show or a real play with roles and costumes, or they could compete in a short movie festival for which they produce movies on selected themes. Almost all cheap point-and-shoot photo cameras can record up to 15 minutes of video with sound, so this idea won’t cost you too much. For bigger children, you can allow them to use a computer video editor for finishing their movies.

3. Creative Kitchen: have the kids help you cook. Make or buy them some colored dough which they can use to make puppets, plants or animals, then let them bake their creations. You can also allow them cook for real, by using a recipe book. You’ll have the opportunity to see how well they can read and how much do they understand from the text. However, always supervise them closely and don’t let them use kitchen appliances when you are not present.

For more ideas of creative home education, you could buy some books that will help you. A good example is “The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities for Kids Ages 3-12″, which is available also online.

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