Utilizing Pinterest for Homeschooling

I mentioned this before, but I fought Pinterest for more than a year. I knew friends who got sucked in and wasted countless hours looking at ideas of recipes, crafts, decorating ideas and other things they would never do themselves.

Now that I allow myself to peek around for 15 minutes a few times a week, it's really an amazing resource. Last week, I stumbled onto a friend's "learning" board.  She's a former early-Elementary teacher who has recently decided to homeschool and I hit the mother load when I saw her idea links!

Letter matching using plastic eggs

I've collected so many ideas that I began feeling overwhelmed. The kids and I have a pretty nice little daily routine in place, and I'm not yet into the habit of pre-planning hands-on activities each week. As much as I want to incorporate science experiments and messy craft fun into our lessons, by the time I'm ready to pull something together, it seems that I'm usually missing pieces, supplies or ingredients.

Last night, I explained my dilemma to Mike and had an epiphany: we can do all of our out-of-the-ordinary Pinterest ideas on family day. Mike's response was, "Then Dad can participate, too!" It's so refreshing that he's excited to be involved.

Love it.

Today, I had an activity that I wanted to present to keep Jason occupied while I taught the big kids. Unfortunately, all Ryan and Kaylin wanted to do was hop down onto the ground and see what the fun was all about!

I filled a veggie tray with different dried beans and pastas, put out some measuring spoons and chopsticks for Jason to use and let him go to town.

Jason wasn't captivated until he saw how Ryan and Kaylin played with the beans and pasta. Kaylin filled the letter-matching Easter eggs with various objects to create shakers, then spelled out words with them.

Ryan created patterns and played with the chopsticks (I snagged the kid-holder from the chopsticks the last time we ate at an Oriental restaurant - they were going to throw them away!)

Then Ryan sorted from largest to smallest

Jason played for a while, then moved on to cleaning off the dry-erase board...

...before asking to paint, which I've (brace yourself) never let him do.

Today was a productive, very hands-on homeschooling day. The kids loved the variety and I loved that I got to actually USE some of the ideas I've been storing up in my head. As I branch out and bring more ideas to life, I'll continue to share them with you!