Are you wondering how to make homeschool fun? This question is something that most homeschooling families ask themselves sooner or later.
Lots of homeschool families have embraced the idea of Fun Fridays. They choose to be less structured in their approach and introduce more creative ways of learning. However, coming up with great ideas and new ways to make homeschool fun can be overwhelming at times.
The beauty of homeschooling is that you can include much more creativity into your curriculum and tailor the teaching to the child throughout the homeschool day. This helps the kids to develop their ways of thinking and become emotionally engaged with the learning experience. Including fun activities makes homeschooling fun for both the kids and the parents and is a great way to make learning more enjoyable for both.
How do I stop being overwhelmed with homeschooling?
- Take a break – enjoy a drink and a snack together
- Get outside in the fresh air for 15 minutes
- Try an energy-boosting activity like hopping on one leg for 2 minutes
- Tell a joke to lighten the mood or sing a silly song!
- Get the kids to ask a ‘Would You Rather‘ question they read from a book
- Talk like a pirate for the next 3 minutes
The idea is to take a quick 5-minute break with a fun activity to energize and make you laugh.
Homeschool Fun Fridays
One of the joys of homeschooling is that you can be flexible with the schedule and teach at your own pace. Lots of families enjoy homeschool fun Fridays / flex Fridays.
Some parents use this idea to enable them to ‘catch up’ on Fridays if they have diverted away from their schedule during the week. Maybe they enjoyed a chance to do something exciting on a Tuesday and thus decide to catch up on Friday.
Other families designate Fridays as a day of fun. Learning can take place in a less structured way through exploration, play and creativity.
Fridays can be the day designated for science experiments, music lessons, a scavenger hunt, board games, board games or card games. You might want to leave the home and visit a local library or go on homeschool field trips to a beach or river. Traditional school teaching does not have the flexibility to make learning fun that homeschool moms enjoy.
Fun Friday Ideas
It’s time for Homeschool Fun Friday! Let’s wrap up the week’s lessons, and finish with something fun and exciting. Here, you’ll find some brilliant ideas to end your homeschool week on a cheerful note. They aim to encourage kids to work together, explore the great outdoors, interact and socialize with others. Bonus: they’re all screen free! Here are some of the best things a homeschool teacher can offer to encourage learning in a fun way. Try to build some of these into your homeschool year.
1) Create an Indoor Laser Maze.
When its cold outside, keep warm and have fun with this ninja-style indoor activity. Utilize yarn (or any type of string), tape, and any hallways in your home to create a laser maze for your kids to work their way through. For younger children, use fewer “lasers”. For older kids, make it more difficult by adding a bunch of lasers in all directions. See if you can make it through the maze without touching any of the strings.
Encourage the whole family to have a go! The kids will love seeing the adults navigate the course. Get the kids to be the timekeepers and count up penalty points!
2) Go on a Nature Walk/Hunt.
Pack the kiddos up and head out into nature. Find a new trail or hiking spot to explore together or stay closer to home at the local park. Turn it into a hunt by choosing to look for certain shapes or colors in nature, or even by creating a list before you head out (include things like a broken twig, a red leaf, a smooth stone, a butterfly, etc,). Hunt with your eyes or even allow children to bring a camera to take pictures of the things they find. Check out our FREE NATURE BINGO CARDS here!
Older kids might enjoy bird watching. Encourage them to find out about the birds that they see and develop this into deeper learning. Migratory birds bring in an element of geography as you investigate just how far they have travelled and where they have come from.
3) Pick a New Park to Explore.
Pick a new park in your city that you have never visited before. Pack a sack lunch, and spend a couple of hours relaxing and playing. For even more Homeschool Friday Fun, send a message to a few homeschool friends to join you. You could even post on a local homeschool social board that you’ll be there looking for new friends. Alternatively, you could designate this as family time. The best way to finish off the trip would be with an ice cream!
4) Go on a “Chalk Walk.”
Grab a bag of chalk and head out on a neighborhood walk. As you go, leave little notes or pictures for other neighbors to find. Writing little motivational messages also gives a mental health boost to both the creator and the finder. You could write the messages on some paper to take with your before you begin this fun craft. You and your children will have so much fun leaving these surprises, and you will brighten someone else’s day, too!
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7) Virtual Museum Tours
Museums all around the world offer virtual tours so you can explore them without leaving home. There’s a range of subjects from art to history and space exploration. Why not pick a famous painting, like Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, then create your own version? For animal lovers, there are virtual tours of zoos and aquariums to choose from. There’s a great list of resources here making it easy to find a museum you can add to your fun ideas list.
8) Postcrossing
Postcrossing is an inexpensive way to help your kids find out about the world. You sign up to the Postcrossing site and request an address and a postcard ID. You mail a postcard to that address and in return, you get a postcard from another postcrosser! The fun part is that the postcard you receive can come from anywhere in the world. People often write about their daily lives, hobbies and where they live and then you can look up the place on a map. It might also inspire you to learn a foreign language! There are plenty of free resources online to help you. It’s also fun to have a World Map poster on your wall and add a little sticker from all the places that you have had postcards. Watch your collection build up!
9) Escape Room in a Box
As a special treat, teenagers will love to solve logic and physical puzzles by playing an escape room in a box. These types of games encourage collaboration and teamwork and a perfect for 4 people. Designed to take an hour, you can set a timer or solve the clues at a more leisurely pace. We really enjoyed the Werewolf experiment and once you have played the game, you can lend it out to another family.
10) Printable Treasure Hunts.
For younger kids, these printable treasure hunts are sure to be a hit. They are designed for 8-12 year old kids and are an inexpensive way to round off the homeschool week. Simply print, prepare the clues, and have your children complete the hunts utilizing the included mazes, ciphers, and clues. Choose between indoor and outdoor hunts, and themes like pirates, outer space, Christmas, under the sea, and more! They only take 10-15 minutes to set up and will entertain your children for 30-60 minutes as they complete the treasure hunt. There’s even a fiendish riddle hunt for teenagers! These are also great for playdates as you can print one for each kid. You can find a full list of them HERE.
Let me know what different ways you have tried to add fun days into your homeschool activities. I’d love to know!
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