RAQ: What are you planning for your homeschool co-op lessons in March?
So I volunteered to teach at my homeschooling co-op for the month of March. I generally volunteered “animals” as my topic of study.
Here are some of the fun things I have planned….
We have our classes split into 45 minutes of science and 45 minutes of either choir or art (I will teach art, another teacher will teach choir). The kids range in age from 3 up to about 11 with the average age being around 4. This creates somewhat of a challenge, but I’m excited to dothisthang! 😉
I teach for 4 weeks and on the 5th week, we’ll be going to a zoo as our related field trip. Fun, right? I think so!
I’m hoping to structure my science lesson like this:
- Read a fictional book with animals to get kids into the mood to do class.
- Read a nonfiction book relating to what we’ll be talking about that day.
- “Lecture” on the topic of the day.
- Have kids grab their school supply bag/box. Seat the kids at the tables, big kids at one, little kids at the other. The table will already have our supplies ready to go for our hands-on activities.
- Work on a lapbook/notebook for our animal studies. Little kids will have most of the work done for them so they basically will just have to draw, paste, and maybe make one or two cuts. Big kids will cut out their own, paste, and probably be required to write a few sentences, do some research in provided books, and create their own art work to illustrate.
- Close with some discussion questions. Maybe send the kids home with some things like crosswords, word searches, coloring pages, or the like to tie our lessons into some fun work for home. Not really “homework” as I won’t be collecting it but … I mean it IS work done at home. haha
For week 1, I’m planning on teaching the difference between invertebrate and vertebrate animals. Then we will focus on the invertebrates and their classifications. Week 2 will be Vertibrates: birds & fish. Week 3 will be amphibians and reptiles. Week 4 will be mammals and a review of all. Week 5 will be the zoo trip and at that trip, we’ll have all sorts of fun planned for us as they’re going to let us do their classroom activities – crafts, animal encounters, etc.
Here are some resources I have pulled together so far:
Animal Classification Lapbook
How to Create an Animal Lapbook
Create an Animal Notebook
Animal Lapbooks
Animal Notebooking Pages
Animal Homeschooling Printables
Animal Homeschooling Resources
Do any of you have some cool homeschooling resources for me to add to the list?
Our group has ABOUT 20 kids in it, so group fun would be cool too!
musicalmary says
We will be doing a Download ‘n Go Amazing Animals study next week…looks like fun to me. I am going to look at some of your resources as well!
~Mary
http://www.homegrownlearners.com
clumsyraine says
This sounds like so much fun! 🙂 Where did you find a zoo to go to??
Jenn says
We’re going to Abilene 🙂