How To Acutally Make Hands On Homeschool Projects Happen

These days, it seems like hands-on homeschool is a buzzword of sorts. What’s all the fuss about? It’s best to define hands-on first because I think its overall meaning might surprise you. You see, hands-on learning can actually mean several things. Most obviously, hands-on means “touching” things during lessons. For instance, rather than reading about simple machines, you actually use simple machines to learn about their characteristics.

Or, when learning about the rock cycle, you make your own rocks by taking them through a rock cycle simulation. Similar to the definition above, hands-on can also mean learning by doing. When you learn about Colonial history and actually do several of the tasks that would have been done during that era, that’s hands-on. As are cooking or baking. Hands-on can also mean connecting somewhat abstract ideas to experiences that build concrete understanding. In other words, real-life experiences become building blocks in the brain, allowing more complex concepts to make sense.

For example, using snap cubes to help a child “see” the formulas for calculating perimeter, area, and volume. Or, using beans to teach how scientists determine a taxonomy. That Homeschool Family is a participant in a variety of programs including the Amazon Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Purchases made from links on this website may result in That Homeschool Family receiving a monetary payment at no extra cost to you. For more details, please see our Privacy Policy.

This is a sponsored post. I have been compensated for my time. I have not been influenced in any way and all opinions are my own. We didn’t start homeschooling to continue boring lessons, did we? Having the ability to include hands on learning in our every day homeschooling lessons was definitely one of the reasons my husband and I decided to pull our kids from public school. With homeschooling numbers on the rise, new homeschooling parents all over the United States are on the search for effective (and cost-effective!) homeschool curriculum, homeschooling tips, inspiration and more.

Now that my family and I are a few years into our homeschooling experience, I’m happy to share my homeschool experiences and suggestions with others in hopes that they’ll end up enjoying homeschooling just... Take a quick look around my blog and you’ll notice that my kids truly thrive when they have access to hands on learning experiences. Gone are the days of spending hours sitting behind desks while enduring seemingly repetitive (read: boring) lessons from musty textbooks. You’ll find none of that here! You will, however, find plenty of ways to make learning meaningful, memorable, & fun! We all know the benefits of hands-on learning in a child’s education—the ability to engage all learning styles, increase retention, allow for real-life application, and improve critical thinking skills.

All excellent reasons to stuff your homeschool day full of hands-on activities for learning. But sometimes, it can be overwhelming feeling like you need to incorporate x number of hands-on activities. Or you start to develop mom guilt over skipping the hands-on activities in a lesson because you don’t want to deal with the messy aftermath. Perhaps, like me, hands-on activities and crafts don’t fall in your creative wheelhouse. If you are homeschooling multiple kids, you may be feeling even more pressure and stress to find the time to incorporate hands-on learning elements into your homeschool day. Like most kids, my children love hands-on activities.

Not wanting my kids to miss out on hands-on learning, I knew I needed to come up with a system that would allow me to easily add hands-on activities to our homeschool day. Homeschooling offers parents so many opportunities, but one of the best ones, I think, is that we have the ability to customize our children’s education. We can choose curricula and tailor lessons to fit their unique learning style. We can be hands-on homeschoolers. What does it mean to be a hands-on homeschooler? It means our at-home learning isn’t confined to textbooks but comes alive through real-world experiences, projects, and creative activities.

Hands-on homeschooling can transform education into an engaging, memorable adventure. In this post, we’ll explore ways to integrate hands-on learning into your homeschool. Hands-on, experiential learning allows children to grasp concepts by doing rather than merely observing. When kids actively participate in the learning process, this improves their comprehension and retention. This means they learn better and remember longer. Need help adding hands-on learning to your homeschool routine?

Today we’re sharing our favorite ways to make it happen. And best of all, they’re all easy and require little to no preparation from you! ** This post contains affiliate links; see our full disclosure for more information about those links. ** I’ve shared before that I’m not the fun homeschool mom and how I don’t naturally gravitate toward hands-on ideas that require extra planning, extra supplies, or extra anything from me. Can you relate?

Despite my personal aversion to all the extras that come with hands-on learning, I know my kids — even with their vastly different learning styles — both benefit from those experiences. Because of that, I’ve had to put in the work and learn how to make hands-on learning a regular part of our homeschool, but in a way that works for me and serves them... Here’s how we strike that balance. It can be tough to trust approaches that don’t echo our own educational experiences. Games can fall into that hard-to-trust category much of the time, but hear me out. Kids naturally learn through play, so why would we not work that into our homeschool plans as much as possible?

Why would we assume they can’t be learning unless it’s through traditional measures like textbooks and worksheets? Crazy, right. Do you agree that kids learn more and understand better when they DO something, rather than just hear or see it? Would you like to include more hands-on activities into your homeschool, but you don’t know how to plan them? As a practical, no-nonsense homeschool parent myself, I have always known that my kids learn and retain information much better when we add hands-on projects to our lessons. These activities help them try out their ideas, use more of their senses, and feel more involved in the learning process.

The biggest problem for me, however, is that I’m not the most creative person. It’s often hard for me to think of unique project ideas. I do much better when I have some general ideas I can use as a starting point and then customize them to fit our current lessons and learning needs. My other concern for hands-on projects is time. I want to create projects that help with learning, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time (or money, or resources) creating an elaborate activity each week. Especially now that my kids are getting older I’m looking for activities they can plan, execute, and learn from more independently.

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