Honestly, I’m not sure if I did my Eganized lesson “correctly.” I’m trying to learn more about his model in my freetime, but I’m no expert in this. What I do know is that I used my imagination, I asked the kids to use theirs, and we all had a good time. The tools that I tried to use from Egan’s framework were storytelling, role-playing, emotional engagement, extremes, humor (because honestly, it was a little ridiculous), vivid imagery, riddles, the binary of life/death, and the heroic quality of saving the world from a super-villain. The kids that I gave my lesson to were a homeschool group between the ages of about 6 and 14. I did go through it a little fast and the lesson lasted about 20-ish minutes.

Initially, I was having trouble figuring out how to Eganize the lesson. The first step in creating a lesson using Egan’s framework is to figure out what’s wonderful about it. That part didn’t seem too hard, because photosynthesis is literally the reason why life on Earth exists. Without it, there wouldn’t be plants and the food chain would collapse fairly rapidly. We oxygen-dependent creatures eventually wouldn’t be able to breathe. But what do you do with that? I was stuck. Then, Brandon from Science is WEIRD suggested that I be a super villain with a photosynthesis off button. At 5’2″, I’m not physically very threatening and I smile constantly, so I didn’t think anyone would buy it, but that gave me the idea to pretend like we were trying together to defeat a supervillain with a photosynthesis off button.

I played around with AI and got it to make me a Photosynthesis Off button that turned out surprisingly well. I gathered clue images using both a royalty free website and AI when I couldn’t find what I wanted. I got the idea to make an official looking letter asking us to solve the case that I could pass around. The morning of the lesson, I had the idea to put everything in a manila envelope labeled TOP SECRET. Even my teenager got pretty into it. As we were driving to the lesson, he changed my ring tone to something that sounded very Mission-Impossible-ish and we worked out a code phrase for him to call me at a specific moment at the beginning of the lesson to get the ball rolling.

Overall, I think it went really well. There were around 15 to 20 kids and even the older ones were clearly amused. The feedback I received from my induction mentor was that all the kids seemed very engaged and nearly all of them actually spoke or contributed in some way. It probably helps that these were all homeschool kids that I know to some degree, so they were more or less willing to go along with my nonsense, but I think it’s fair to say we all had a good time and nearly everyone hopefully learned something.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: 20 to 30 minutes, plus extra if you want to start a leaf collection
Difficulty: easy, but requires an adult to lead the child or group of children
Cost: Free printable

Materials

• paper or device with screen
• manila envelope (optional)
• cup of water (optional)
• leaf (optional)
• flashlight (optional)

Free Printable

Photosynthesis Lesson – Complete Packet with Instructions

Photosynthesis Lesson – Just the Printables

Instructions

1. PART 1: SET THE SCENE – Print the printables packet or load it up on a tablet or other device if you are using technology to share the clues. If you are printing it out, consider putting all the paper in a manila envelope and writing TOP SECRET on the outside. As you are getting your lesson started and talking to the kids casually, pretend to receive communication from a secret agency. You can either have someone in the audience call your phone and pretend to answer it, or have someone deliver your Top Secret envelope to you, or pretend to receive an important transmission on your device. See the instructions packet for an actual script you can use to introduce the evil Dr. Shrubslayer and the Photosynthesis Off button.
   
   
   
   
   
2. PART 2: PHOTOSYNTHESIS – The next step is to get kids to understand a bit about the chemical reaction that IS photosynthesis. What are the inputs? What are the outputs? Try to think of this as a dialogue. See what the kids already know. Ask them to think about what plants need to grow. If they need help, you can show them the clues. Even if they don’t need help, you can still show them the clues to make more of a visual impact. Photosynthesis needs sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide (what we humans breathe out).
   
   
   
   The outputs are oxygen (that’s an oxygen tank on the scuba diver) and glucose (a type of sugar).
   
   
   
   If you would like to help kids remember this reaction, ask for 3 volunteers, one to be water, one to be light, and one to be carbon dioxide. One child will hold a cup of water and you can stick a leaf in it. Next have another kid shine a flashlight on the leaf, and have the third kid blow on it. Ask everyone to imagine the oxygen coming out of the plant and take deep breathes to breathe it in. Ask them to also imagine it growing very slowly as it uses up the sugar to get bigger.
   
3. PART 3: IMPACTS OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS – Now that they know what photosynthesis is, the students have to decide if they want to help capture Dr. Shrubslayer and stop him from using his Photosynthesis Off machine. (We’re busy people. We can’t stop EVERY super villain that comes to town.) In order to decide whether we want to go to the trouble of helping, we need to know why photosynthesis is important. Again, have a conversation and see what the kids already know. Ask them to think about the inputs and outputs of photosynthesis that we just discovered and what could happen if that reaction was not taking place. Show the visual clues as needed to either prompt an answer or highlight an answer given. The answer are that if there was no photosynthesis, we would all be hungry (talk about how even carnivores rely on plants), the land would be barren, and we would all struggle to breathe.
   
   
   
4. PART 4: CHLOROPHYLL – Hopefully at the end of the last section, the kids will decide YES, it’s important that we thwart the evil plan to end photosynthesis. Now introduce the next part of the role-playing game. Say that a secret code word is required to break into his facility and destroy his device. Thankfully, we have a riddle to help us figure out what the code word is. Again, refer to the Instruction Packet for a suggested script. Present this riddle:
   
   
   
   Use the riddle as a starting point for discussion. Have the kids decipher what the riddle means, line by line. What sort of word are we looking for? Once they figure out that it is a chemical that makes plants green in summer, but goes away in fall, see if anyone knows the word. Whether they do or don’t, show them the visual clues to help them remember the word: a pool for CHLOR, a donut for O, and candy filling for FILL. Chlor-O-Fill –> Chlorophyll
   
   
   
   Once they figure out the secret word, pretend to call it in and act like they have saved the world. They have kept the planet green and alive instead of barren and dead!
   
   
   
5. PART 5: LEAF COLLECTION (optional) – Since the group I did the lesson for was an outdoor nature group (Wild + Free), I wanted to give them something hands-on to do that involved nature. I brought little sheets of paper and crayons and challenged the kids to make leaf rubbings of as many different types of leaves as possible. The younger kids tried it, but at this point the preteens and teens mostly wandered away to socialize, which was fine too.

I hope you have fun learning a bit about photosynthsis in this unconventional way! If you try it out, let me know how it goes!

Related Links

Best Books for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids
Tabletop Games for Kids

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Many people know that I made my kids’ Minimalist Math elementary curriculum. I’m pretty proud of this. I worked hard to make sure the math covered all the same content kids would see in a traditional curriculum and it has built in repetition that helps these concepts to stick. For science, we have been using Science is WEIRD for the past 4 years and love it. For history, we’ve tried different things, but last year, I just read a chapter each week from Curiosity Chronicles and it went fine. Language Arts though! I love Brave Writer. I used to work for Brave Writer. Their philosophy about education aligns really well with my own unschool-y tendencies. However, it’s a bit parent-intensive. You read great books and discuss. A LOT. I knew I wasn’t going to do it justice while working full time.

That awareness of my own limits led me to create 36 worksheets last summer that covered the basics of what I felt like kids should know from looking through the various language arts curriculum I’ve purchased over the years. Capitalization, punctuation, homonyms, parts of speech, sentence structure, verb tenses, point of view, even a little spelling…I wanted to make sure they were touching on these topics throughout the year so that they could get more comfortable with them.

Brave Writer uses actual passages from actual books written by real authors which I love. I didn’t want there to be any sort of copyright issues and I wanted to tailor the passages to the concepts that I wanted kids to think about, so I wrote my own. I am not an author. These passages are a little silly and far-fetched, but I wrote things that I hoped my kids would find mildly amusing. Each page is one week of work, which takes about 15 minutes with help.

There are 3 parts to each page. The top part focuses on mechanics through corrections (end marks, commas, punctuating dialogue, capitalization, that sort of thing) with a little bit of spelling through having them pick the correct homonym (such as there/their/they’re) and correcting spelling mistakes.

The second part focuses on sentence structure by having them learn to identify the subject and predicate as well as the type of sentence (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory). We also focus on verb tenses (past/present/future) and point of view (first/second/third).

The third part is entirely grammar work by having them identify parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, articles, adverbs, etc.).

After I had made 36 worksheets for the 36 weeks of the school year, I still had a little time, so I decided to go through all 36 sheets and make a LEVEL 2 for my middle schooler. It is the exact same passages, but I added at most a sentence or two and asked them to do more (make more corrections, identify more parts of speech, etc.). I also added in some more difficult concepts like gerunds, participles, and appositives. Not that I think my kids really need to know these things, but I don’t them to be afraid of words they’ve never heard of before.

More than anything, these sheets became conversation starters. To be fair, I think most adults don’t know all of these concepts (and we’re just fine, aren’t we? ). It got to the point that my husband wouldn’t help their kids on these sheets, because he didn’t have a lot of confidence that he was doing it correctly. The reason why I didn’t post these last summer was because I wanted to have experience using them, and I wanted to make an answer key. I just finished the answer keys about a couple weeks ago, but they are currently only available to Patreon subscribers. It is $5/month and you can cancel after one month, but if that is a financial burdern, just let me know and we can work something out.

These sheets definitely served their purpose. My third grader used Level 1 all year. My 7th grader used Level 2 all year. My 5th grader started with Level 1, but partway through the year, I realized there wasn’t any reason why he couldn’t do Level 2 so I switched him. If you know what you are doing, I would say Level 1 takes about 60 seconds and Level 2 takes about 3 minutes. Since the kids inevitably need help and require some explanation, overall, they would work on it on their own for about 5 to 10 minutes, then I would help them for around 10 minutes, reminding them what all the different concepts mean.

There is no instruction included, so if you need help, you will likely need to search on Google (or YouTube) for concepts like conjunctions. (I know I did!) After having put this together, though, and writing up an answer key, I feel pretty confident that I know what I’m doing, so also feel free to reach out if you have a questions or think I got something wrong!

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School (roughly 3rd to 8th grade, should have some basic reading skills)
Time Required: about 20 minutes per week
Difficulty: varies, there are easier and harder concepts each week
Cost: Free printable

Materials
paper

Instructions
Print out the curriculum and help your child complete one worksheet each week for each of the 36 weeks of school. If your child is in 3rd through 5th grade, I would try Level 1 first. If your child is in 6th to 8th grade, you may want to consider starting with Level 2.

Free Printable

Minimalist Grammar + Mechanics – Level 1

Minimalist Grammar + Mechanics – Level 2

Related Links

Math Activities for Kids
Best Books for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids

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If a kid enjoys reading, then I feel like they are pretty much guaranteed to get a better education than a child who attends school for 6 to 7 hours a day and does NOT enjoy reading. Kids forget 95% of the facts they learn anyway. (I just made that statistic up, but it feels right, doesn’t it?) But stories? Those last. Someone who reads confidently and comfortably can learn anything. As a bonus, reading about characters and storylines that authors have taken the time to carefully construct get lessons on life and character and morality. It is a rare day when I stop one of my children from reading a book for pleasure. Though, to be fair, this also true of when they are drawing, building, playing fantasy games, etc. Some parents never wake a sleeping baby. I never interrupt a happily playing child that is using their imagination.

Now, my first two children became readers fairly naturally. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I had a lot more time to practice with them when they were young. See this adorable reading log train I used with them. My third child was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade. Getting him to be comfortable reading took a lot more work, but now he is going into 6th grade and reads ALL the time. He was literally bugging me just a few minutes about when the libray books I requested for him are coming in. (Answer, sometime between Tuesday and December. You never can tell.) My fourth child though…oh my poor fourth child. I went back to college to become a teacher when he was 6. I finished my degree, got my teachers license and am not working full time. The end result? He is going into fourth grade and was still reading at about a first grade level in January.

This needed to be fixed. In my opinion, the best way to teach a kid to read is to facilitate practice. I started by going back to basics. I learned from my dyslexic child the importance of decodable texts for building reading skills so I went back and redid my kindergarten and first grade suggestions on my Book Series for Kids page. Then I told him the plan. We were goign to make a reading chain, because who has time for a train in this busy world, and I was going to sit with him every day so we could read books (easy books) to add to his chain. His reward was that once he chain was as long as our hallway, he would get to pick a flavor of ice cream that we would have for dessert.

We used many of the books on the Kindergarten and First Grade series pages, though I’m realizing now that I forgot to add the ones in the picture above. Those are from Julia Donaldson’s Songbirds series (affiliate link) which is a bit expensive, but quite lovely. I will be saving them for any future potential grandkids.

What I was even more pleased by though was that when we finished our chain, my then third grade son did not want to stop. He kept going on his own. He made little rocketships and would add them as he read his easy readers by himself. At first, he was not adding the titles, but when I told him he should, he started doing it.

Even my 5th grade dyslexic child didn’t want to miss out on the action. He made his own reading chain too. At this point, he is obsessed with the Wings of Fire books and read one every 3 days or so, but for his reading challenge, he went back and read some books that were easy for him like Dragon Masters. It does not matter to me what they read, as long as they are reading.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this went. We are using different strategy over the summer, to ensure my youngest makes the most progress possible in this downtime. I’m hoping to share this with results at the end of summer. However, the reading chains were a very successful strategy during the busy school year time. It took some diligence when I was the one reading with him every day and helping him make his chain, but it was worth it. I did not even expect him to take over and keep doing it on his own. That was just a bonus. I would say he progressed about a full grade level during the 5 months of so that he was doing it, which still leaves him about a grade level behind his age and about a grade level from the really fun books.

All kids develop at their own pace, so I never want my kids to feel pressured. However, if we can use this summer to turn him into someone who really enjoys reading, I am all for it!

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: ~10 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Practically free

Materials:

• paper (preferably colored construction paper for visual appeal)
• scissors or paper cutter
• tape

Instructions:

1. Cut the paper into strips.
2. Acquire some easy books. Check your local library or my book series suggestions.
3. Everytime the child reads a book, either alone or with your help, write the title and add it to the chain!

That’s it! Happy reading!

Click here for more Starting to Read activities for kids.

Related Links

Best Books for Kids
Homemade Fun for Preschoolers
Learning Activities for Kids

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I was reading an article recently about artificial intelligence that was talking about how if you start the creation process using AI, then the end results produced by a group of test subjects all ended up pretty similar. The conclusion was that while AI can be useful to polish up your finished project, children should still be relying on their own brains in the initial stages of any project to get the most creative result possible. My kids did not use AI at all in this project two years ago and their creativity shines through. Even though all four kids had the same topic each week, what they produced was always dramatically different. I am planning to repeat this History Bingo in the Fall and I’ll have to give some thought as to whether or not I want them to use AI and at what stage, since they are now more familiar with using it as a learning tool.

Basically, the way this works is that each week kids learn about a topic in history and then create a project based on the Bingo Board. When I did this the first time while I was doing my student teaching, the whole process was very freeform. I created a list of topic related to American History (available in my Patreon membership) and then (roughly) each week they chose a topic to focus on from a list of 3 or so. We would typically watch YouTube videos or a documentary as a family in the evening one night after I got home from my student teaching, then they would have the rest of the week to dive deeper on their own, if they wanted to, and then produce something. The History Bingo board was primarily meant to be inspiration. They could use the word on the Bingo space to create their own idea, or by clicking on the word, they would be taken to a page with a list of ideas I came up with.

Each time they got Bingo, they would get to choose from a list of “prizes” such as being the one to choose the movie on family movie night, or the next flavor of ice cream we bought, or a game to play, or 15 extra minutes of video game time. This worked pretty well at first, but towards the end of the year, they were frequently filling in squares that resulted in double and sometimes triple bingos, so be prepared for that. There are 36 weeks of the school year and only 24 squares, so if you wanted, you could let kids repeat projects. If I’m being honest, my kids only completed 24 projects in the school year, but I was pretty happy with that. There were weeks when “producing work” got away from us, and other weeks when they wanted to continue what they were working on from the previous week. They learned something different each week, but didn’t always produce something to show it. Overall, I am happy with the amount of work they did though!

What pleased me the most was the way that each kid could play to their strengths. Two of my kids, my youngest and my oldest, REALLY enjoyed creating videos. My youngest couldn’t write yet when we did this, so it made sense that recording himself talking or acting out scripts was easier for him. My daughter on the other hand choose to include a lot of writing each week. She was creative in the type of writing she did (stories, fictional letters, to-do lists, how-to articles, advertisements, etc.), but most of her projects were mainly typing. My middle son loves art and often found a way to turn his Bingo quest into something artistic, like a painting, scupture, comic strip, or even Minecraft world. I would make him write a little something to go with it describing what he made, but he did not rely much on words.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: Varies, but probably averages about 1 hour per week, not including learning/research time.
Difficulty: As easy or as hard as your kiddo wants!
Cost: Free

I am going to provide the History Bingo Board in two different formats. Either way, I recommend printing the first page with the actual board so that your kids can keep it at the front of a binder all year. You may want to keep this as a physical portfolio and add their projects or pictures of their projects to the binder. (Honestly, we did a digital portfolio using a free Google Site for each kid. I don’t have permission to share my kids’ sites, but maybe I’ll create a tutorial in the fall when we start over for the coming school year!)

Option 1: Printable PDF Document

Access your printable your History Bingo document here

Option 2: Editable Google Doc – I am including this option, because I want you to be able to modify it to suit your own family’s needs. However, please don’t use this for commercial purposes! If other families or teachers would like to use it, please direct them to this post.

Make a copy of the History Bingo Google Doc

In order to make a copy, you’ll want to select “File”, then “Make a copy,” then “Entire Presentation.” This will save it to your own Google Drive where you can edit is as you wish.

This is the general procedure I used:

1. First we would learn about something. When I did this a couple years ago, I spent a bit of effort choosing American History topics for each week. (That full list of topics is available in my Patreon membership, but here is a preview.)
   
   
   This coming year, I believe I will use Curiosity Chronicles Ancient History and read a chapter each week. The kids can continue learning about the same topic on their own using YouTube videos or other books if they want and as appropriate depending on their age.
   
2. Have them choose a square in the History Bingo Board game. They can use the word written in the box as their own inspiration, or if you click on the word, it will take you to a separate page in the document with some ideas that I came up with. For example:
   
   
   
3. The child then spends about an hour or so working on their project using as much creativity as they can!
   
4. When the child gets a bingo, celebrate!

Happy creative history learning!

Related Links

History Activities for Kids
Social Science Activities for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids

The post History Bingo appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

While I definitely have opinions about politics, I have done my best to make this lap book as neutral and nonpartisan as possible. I believe that the best future is one in which all sides can communicate openly and respectfully with one another and try to understand each other’s point of view.

That being said, while I tried to create this lap book as accurately as possible, there may be finer points of certain political parties which I am not as familiar with. If you believe I got anything wrong regarding any of the four candidates positions on certain issues, please let me know. I am always learning.

For those that have older kids vs. younger kids, there are two versions of this lapbook. One version I call the “minimal writing” version. It is the one I use with my own kids. Anything that could be pre-filled out, I typed in already. There is still some writing, like the page that asks who the child would vote for. However, it is not as overwhelming for new writers.

The other version leaves a lot more blank, so older kids can research the answers. They will need to look up the duties of the president and vice president and the dates of the debates, election, and inauguration. They will need to find the number of electoral voters per state. The biggest undertaking is the chart in which kids will need to decide which issues are important to them and then research the different candidates’ positions on those issues.

Of course, there is always the option to mix and match. Some kids might benefit from looking up some answers, while having others already filled in for them. Both versions of the lap book have a map for the child to color as the results come in. There is also a final tally page where they can keep track of the number of electoral votes awarded for each candidate. This way they can watch real time who is winning the race to 270 electoral votes and the presidency.

If you are using this lap book with elementary-aged kids or younger, there are two picture books that I recommend trying to get from your library. Back when I made our first election lap book 8 years ago, our family really enjoyed Grace For President by Kelly DiPucchio. Not only is it a charming story, it does a fantastic job of introducing kids to concepts such as the electoral college and swing states.

We also read Duck for President by Doreen Cronin. This book targets a slightly younger audience. All my kids liked it, including my preschooler, though my older kids did not learn anything new. It is great for explaining what an election is and illustrating the difference between local vs. national politics.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~30 minutes to assemble
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable

Materials

• Paper for printing 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Lap Book. (Note that if you are doing the “minimal writing” version of the lap book, you will want to print pages 1-13. If you are doing the blank version, you will want pages 1-7 and 14-19.)
• manila file folder (personally, I like the straight cut version for lap books, but any will work equally well.)
• 4 pieces of cardstock

Supplies & Tools

• Scissors
• Tape
• Pencil
• Glue
• Stapler

Instructions

1. First, print out the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Lap Book. If you would like to create the “minimal writing” version of the lap book, you will want to print pages 1-13. If you would rather create the blank version, print pages 1-7 and 14-19.
2. Cut out all the pieces.
   
3. Make your election vocabulary booklets and staple them together. You have some options. My personal preference is to put the picture on top, then the definition (which I call the clue), and then the vocabulary word on the bottom. That way kids can test themselves to see if they can figure out what the word is using the picture and definition. Another option would be to put the word on top, then the picture and definition underneath.
   
4. Fold the shorter side of your manila file folder inward to meet the middle, as shown.
   
5. Fold the longer side of the manila file folder in to meet the middle as well. I chose to overlap them slightly, but that is up to you.
   
6. Tape a piece of cardstock to the top of the lap book. Remember to tape it from behind when it is folded down so it can open and close easily.
   
7. Tape a sheet of cardstock to the bottom of lapbook. Again, remember to tape it when it is folded inside the lap book.
   
8. Tape a second piece of cardstock to the right of the piece of cardstock at the top of the lap book.
   
9. Cut your last piece of cardstock in half. I used a paper cutter, but you could also just fold it in half and use scissors.
   
10. Tape one of the half sheets of cardstock onto the left of the sheet of cardstock on top.
    
    When you are finished attaching the cardstock, it should look like this:
    
11. Place the cover page on top of the file folder and center it.
    
12. Without moving the page, bring forward whichever side of the file folder will be on top. I chose to bring the shorter side forward, but it doesn’t really matter. Use a pencil to mark the edge of the side. This is where you will cut.
    
13. Cut along the pencil marking.|
    
14. Glue the cover pieces onto the front of the lapbook.
    
15. When you open the election lap book, glue the President and Vice President duties on either side. Remember that there are two versions of these sheets – one filled in and one blank. Choose the one that is more appropriate for your child.
    
16. Glue the Political Parties label and cards onto the piece of cardstock on top, when it is folded down, as shown.
    
17. When you lift up the political parties, glue the presidential candidates on the bottom sheet of cardstock which is still folded up. Be sure to match the candidates to the political parties that were on the top sheet.
    
    
18. On the half sheet of cardstock directly above the presidential candidates, before it is opened up, glue in the important dates. Note that there are two versions of this page with the dates blank and filled in.
    
19. On the full piece of cardstock directly above the presidential candidates, before it is opened up, glue in the election vocabulary.
    
20. In the area after you unfold the top pieces of card stock, glue the important issues onto the 2 and half page spread. You can choose to either use the pre-filled-in issues pages or the blank version.
    
21. When you fold down the presidential candidates, glue the electoral map onto the middle section of the manila file folder and the final tally onto the very bottom piece of cardstock. Note that there are two versions of these pages as well.
    

Your 2024 United States presidential election lap book is now ready to use. Have fun taking advantage of this once-in-four-years learning opportunity!

Click here for more Government and Civics activities and printables for kids.

Related Links

History Activities for Kids
Social Science Activities for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids

The post 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Lap Book appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

This 2024 set of presidential election cards features the following 20 vocabulary words and 4 candidates:

• election
• president
• vice president
• campaign
• electoral college
• debate
• popular vote
• incumbent
• caucus
• ballot
• democracy
• inauguration
• executive branch
• swing state
• veto
• political party
• Republican Party
• Democratic Party
• Libertarian Party
• Green Party
• Donald Trump
• Kamala Harris
• Chase Oliver
• Jill Stein

These cards are actually inspired by Montessori education, meaning that in addition to the control cards shown above, they also come as split cards used for matching. Younger kids can match just the pictures to the names or words. Slightly older kids can match the pictures to the name or key word plus description. The oldest kids can math the name or key word to the description or try to match all 3 parts. Once kids have done the matching, they can use the control cards to see if they are right, making the activity self-correcting if you want it to be.

Another thing I love about Montessori-inspired multi-part cards is that they can be used for a number of games. The cards which contain on the information can be used as clue cards. You can use any board game (like Candyland or Chutes & Ladders) and some dice to race to the finish by just drawing a clue card for each turn and only rolling if you can correctly name the word associated with the clue card. If you don’t have a game board, you are welcome to print out my free generic game board.

Another way to play games with these cards is to do a memory style matching game. Simply choose two types of cards like picture and full information or word and clue. Then lay them out in a grid and take turns trying to make matches. I recommend not starting out with the full set of 24 cards. Start with a smaller subset and then work your way up.

Personally, I recommend laminating the cards for durability, but if you only plan to use them for a couple days, you could leave them as just paper. Printing on cardstock is also an option.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, less than $3 to laminate

Materials:

• Paper for printing U.S. Presidential Election Cards and corresponding control cards. (Note that the last page of each document does not need to be printed as it just contains legal information regarding image sources.)
• Paper for printing bonus Presidential Candidates 2024 cards (again, no need to print the last page)
• 18 thermal laminating pouches

Supplies & Tools:

• Laminator
• Paper trimmer or scissors

Instructions:

1. Print the U.S. Presidential Election Cards, the corresponding control cards, and the 2024 Presidential Candidates bonus cards
2. Laminate them using thermal laminating pouches (instead, you could also print on card stock, use contact paper to laminate, or not laminate them at all).
   
3. Cut them out.
   

See my Montessori-inpired cards page for further details on how to use these cards.

Enjoy turning this upcoming 2024 presidential election into a hands-on learning experience for your children!

Click here for more Government and Civics activities and printables for kids.

Related Links

History Activities for Kids
Social Science Activities for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids

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Like my multiplication sheets, these division practice sheets are focused on helping kids memorize their times tables. These are NOT practice sheets for long division (though if anyone would like something along those lines, let me know)! These sheets are simply the inverse of the multiplication ones. They will help children see the connection between mutliplication and division.

When I started putting them together I had a moment of uncertainty where I was considering which form to write the division problem. Should I use the division symbol, write it as a fraction, or put the number inside the house like we do with long division? Eventually, I opted for all 3! It’s important for kids to know that even though they look different, all three of these forms are representing division!

Like my multiplication sheets, these practice pages focus on one number at a time, but then also have review pages up to and including that number. I definitely recommend going through the multiplication sheets first, but then when you want to start division, I hope this format helps your child not feel too overwhelmed as they build up their skills.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary
Time Required: 1 minute
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable

Materials:
paper

Instructions:
Print out these free printable division practice sheets as many times as you want. Here is an answer key in case it is helpful!

Related Links

Math Resources
Free Minimalist Math Curriculum
Best Books for Kids

The post Division Practice Sheets appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

1. A Teacher’s Job is Impossible – What is it that we expect a teacher to do? Essentially, take a group of kids who were all born within the same 12 month range and improve their skills and abilities in specific areas, right? Those of us who are homeschooling and have more than one kid know firsthand how vastly different even children in the same family can be. Teaching a small group of kids that you are actually raising yourself and control all aspects of their life is hard. Teaching a group of 30 plus kids who all have different abilities, backgrounds, life experience, and levels of motivations is a Herculean task. If they succeed at getting even 80% of their students to improve their skills by even a small percentage, they deserve an all expenses paid vacation to a tropical resort.
2. One-on-One Is Crucial for ALL Kids – Nothing compares to one-on-one attention. I found in my classroom that the students who made the most progress the most quickly were the ones who came in for lunctime tutoring. If I could spend 15 to 20 minutes with a student working through problems, I could usually straighten out any areas of confusion and get them going on the right path. For those who didn’t come in for one-on-one tutoring, I could spend 2 to 3 weeks (10 plus hours) trying to hammer home the same points with a far lower rate of success. I made a point to spend classtime checking in with those who were struggling, but due to time constraints and the vast number of kids needing help, I could never get to all of them to my satisfaction.
3. The Mental Work is Crucial – I think the reason why one-on-one time is so valuable is that kids learn best by doing, making mistakes, and understanding where they went wrong. However, in school, kids are expected to be doing a lot, but often they don’t understand where they are going wrong. On the days when I gave individual feedback to student work, I would spend well over an hour, per class period, writing comments on assignments in the evenings. Teachers work so hard already. This CAN’T be what we expect of them. I learned quickly that the most efficient way to get kids involved in the mental effort without destroying my life was to make them to do it in class, in front of me. Lecturing does not work anywhere near as well as letting the kids talk and helping them make connections. Presenting lessons may seem more efficient, but if it’s not seeping in for 85% of the class, the time is wasted.
4. EVERYONE Needs to be Engaged – My clinical supervisor recommended my second week teaching that I implement a method to call on “non-volunteers.” We all have those kids that will raise their hands and answer any questions we ask. (We love those kids.) However, those are the not the kids that need the help. We need to call on the ones that are totally lost, sleeping, or on their cell phones. We need to make them understand that our class is a safe place for them to not know the answer, because we will help them get there. The way I accomplished this was using a Spin-the-Wheel app. I put all my kids names on it and would choose a kid at random about 20 to 30 times per period to respond to what I was saying. This may seem like cruel and unusual punishment, but it WORKED.
5. Math Skills are REALLY Bad – I have always wondered if my Minimalist Math curriculum is sufficient since it involves so much less work than a traditional curriculum. After spending 4 months in public high school, my belief is that it is not only enough, but it is superior. Those kids have done SO MUCH MATH in their lives and yet they are pulling out their calculators to multiple one hundred by two. There may be a few kids with strong math skills (though honestly, I didn’t meet them). There are far more students who don’t understand how to use math creatively to solve problems, which is what is required in a high school physics class and in life. They have memorized techniques without understanding what they are doing. As a result, they have zero confidence when it comes to math and don’t know how to make fundamental math principles work for them. The way math is taught in schools really needs to be reconsidered, because it is not working.
6. The Pace is Insanely Slow – As a homeschooling mom, I still cannot fathom how little is accomplished in 5 class periods each week. That is several hours of time and yet I still feel like I could basically summarize everything we did in a week of 9th grade Honors Physics to my 8th grader in 20 minutes or less. What is particularly sad about this state of affairs is that there are students who I could have summarized the whole week in 20 minutes for as well. Those students are basically killing time the rest of the week. Simultaneously, there are students who still do not understand the main points even after a full week. They are not dumb. They just need one-on-one time to sort out misconceptions. Of course, I didn’t want to leave those kids behind, so sometimes I would tag on an extra day or two just to work with those kids wasting even more time for those who already understand the concept.
7. The Workload is Unnecessarily High – I feel that another reason why the pace is so slow is that the workload is so high. This may be specific to math and science classes, but if we give the kids a ton of work to do and they struggle to understand it, then our choices are to either leave a bunch of kids behind or slow the pace for everyone. It turns out I really prioritize efficiency when it comes to learning and in my own life. I once took the 50 plus questions that my host teacher wanted the students to do during a unit and categorized them into 4 primary categories plus a couple bonus tricky categories. How much more useful would it be to kids if instead of having them work all these problems and make mistakes that no one would ever notice and correct for them, we taught them to recognize the 4 different categories of problems? I tried this with some success, but didn’t have the opportunity to implement it fully. If I were a full time teacher with my own class, I think I would start by giving the students a succinct study guide at the beginning of each unit, then introduce problems one at a time and have them learn to figure out on their own which part of the study guide they should use. This would help them see that what they think is a mountain they have to climb is actually a much more manageable hill.
8. Standardized Tests are Bad, but Unit Tests are Worse – Even though my kids homeschool, they still have to do standardized testing, which I despise, since we homeschool through a charter. I want them to be enthusiastic learners and let’s be real. Testing is not conducive to achieving this goal. The testing my kids do is diagnostic testing for reading and math a couple times a year and state testing every spring. I’m realizing now that what is nice about this situation is that all the learning we do throughout the year is not tied in any way to these tests. Also, nice for me is that these tests show improvement year after year and my kids don’t need to know the results. Compare this with public school were every single moment of a student’s time is typically tied to some upcoming assessment. Chapter tests, unit tests, pop quizzes….this is not why we want our kids to learn, but it is their primary motivation. (Or worse, they have no motivation.) The absolute best part of homeschooling, apart from the one-on-one advantage, is that we don’t have submit our kids to this kind of torture.
9. You Don’t Need a Degree – I hope most people know this already, but you absolutely do not need a degree to homeschool. I earned my Masters of Education and it improved my ability to teach my own kids not at all. I was actually disappointed, because I was hoping I would learn something that would transform the way I think about education and teaching, but it did not. What you need in order to homeschool is a willingness to learn alongside your children and show them all the magic and beauty the world has to offer. Honestly, I think this is what teachers in schools need as well and it is not taught in an education program. We want our children to learn how to think critically and be curious about the world around them. If we are not excited about our children’s education, they why should we expect them to be? Being willing to model an openness to learning for our students is far more valuable than a degree will ever be.
10. The Kid Are Actually Great – I feel like overall my general takeaway was that the homeschooling model is far superior to public school if you have a parent or individual willing to take responsibility for a child’s education and help them along the way. Mostly, I was surprised by how inefficient and ineffective public school education turned out to be. However, there was one key area that I think many homeschoolers might be surprised by. We love our homeschooled kids. By and large they are quirky and unjaded and empathetic. However, I think public school kids get a bad rap sometimes by homeschoolers. I LOVED my public school students. They might be less quirky in an attempt to fit in with their peers, and they are certainly more jaded based on everything they’ve seen, but overall, they are not less kind. Yes, there is bullying and bad behavior in public schools, but it would be sad to paint all the kids with the same brush. So many of them are compassionate, interesting individuals that the one thing I regret is that my homeschooled kids don’t get to spend more time with them.

I know most of this was not earthshattering information, but I hope this was helpful for some! For those of you homeschooling, keep going! Trust me, you are doing better than you know! For those of you in the classroom, just know that you are seen and appreciated. The world needs you!

Related Links

Minimalist Math Curriculum Methodology
Learning Activities for Kids
Best Books for Kids

The post 10 Lessons Learned as a Homeschool Teacher in Public School appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

I have had so much fun coaching FLL! If you are thinking about doing it, I can’t emphasize enough what a valuable experience this is for children. Since I’ve also been doing my students teaching in a high school physics classrom while coaching robotics, I’ve seen the problems with expecting students to follow an assigned curricula. There is no motivation. In the FLL classroom, students can’t help but learn. The challenges are fun and the kids are motivated to solve them through trial and error. Especially if you have kids that want to go into STEM fields later in life, I highly recommend FLL. We are so lucky that FIRST exists!

Here are some key lessons I learned during my inaugural season. I hope some of them are helpful to you.

1. Clean your wheels!

If the mission you are trying to solve relies on your robot traveling a precise distance, you want your wheels to grip the mat the same way every time. Slipping is death! We missed what would have been our top score at one of our tournaments by a mere millimeter and the grime on our wheels was 100% to blame for this. As soon as I cleaned it up with a hand sanitizing wipe it started behaving the way it had in practice.

2. Make sure kids know how to pass the robot. 

In the loud, anxiety-producing environment of a tournament, accidents will happen. During our practice round at the competition, one child hurriedly tried passing the robot to another child who wasn’t ready. The robot fell and broke into 4 or 5 pieces just seconds before they were about to go on. (Thankfully we had a backup!) I think I will be telling this story for years to come to make sure kids know how important it is to make sure the person that is receiving the handoff is ready!

3. Speaking of anxiety, try playing an applause/cheering YouTube track in the background when the kids practice.

There’s nothing like being at a real competition, but this can help them be a little more prepared for the intensity that they will feel when they are at the real thing! 

4. If at all possible, have a backup robot!

See #2. 

5. Also, have a USB key with all of your programs backed up.

You never know what will happen! See #6.

6. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, switch computers between practice and the tournament.

I tried to make a minor change to one of the programs at a tournament only to have the Spike Prime update and delete ALL the programs on the robot. Thankfully, I had the programs backed up and could quickly add them back onto the robot. (Thank you, #5!) However, the maximum speed of the robot was slightly different after the update and all of our codes were a little off. I eventually figured out that connecting the robot to computer with a newer version of the Spike Prime app caused the update. It’s hard to know exactly what version of the app each individual computer is using, so in the future, I will never switch mid tournament!

7. Set your speed and acceleration in each of your programs.

Even though I honestly believe the update affected our robot’s maximum speed in a way I don’t yet know how to control, it is still a good idea to slightly lower your robot’s maximum speed and acceleration for precision movements! These changes will slow the robot down but also make its behavior more repeatable. If you are just returning to home base or need to slam into a wall, go ahead and increase the speed back up to save those few precious seconds!

8. Speaking of precision, you need to be using the gyro for precision missions!

It is frustrating for the kids when the robot seems to behave differently each time you run it. Our teams had an advantage in that both my co-coach and I have a lot of experience programming. We knew how to make use of the gyro sensor. I’m planning to add some tutorials to the blog soon so you can avoid some of those frustrations as well! Stay tuned!

9. Think outside the box.

Watching how other teams completed missions at the tournaments gave us ideas for extra ways to earn points. We were able to implement some of these changes between qualifiers and regionals. Remember that you don’t need to solve the missions the way the designer intended. All that matters is the configutation of the table when the time runs out. At our very first meeting of the season, the veteran coach I was working with had the kids brainstorming different ideas for how they could solve each mission. This is SUCH a valuable practice! We will definitely spend more time strategizing out-of-the-box strategies earlier in future seasons.

10. Remember the robot game itself is only a small piece of FLL.

I’ll be honest, the robot game is all I really cared about. It’s the part that seems the most fun to me, so it is definitely where we put our focus throughout our team meetings. However, once you get to the tournament, the Innovation Project, the robot design presentation, and the way the team demonstrates their core values have equal weight. Even though one or our teams got a trophy for coming in 3rd in the robot games, they did not advance to the Championships. I still need to learn more about how those decisions are made, but in the future, we will put a little more thought and effort into the 3 judging categories as well! Our innovation project actually turned out amazing and is leading to us starting a chess club in our small town, but this didn’t come about into AFTER the tournaments, because we put it off to focus on the game.

I hope some of these FLL coaching tips were helpful to you in your FIRST LEGO League journey! Feel free to reach out if you have questions!

Related Links

Robotics Activities for Kids
Science Activities for Kids
All Learning Activities

The post 10 Lessons Learned My First Year as an FLL Coach appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

My goal for this series of challenges is to only use pieces that come in the LEGO Spike Prime Education set. (That’s the big yellow box.) For the actual competition, I suspect we’ll want the expansion set so that we can build a multi-functional robot. However, even the missions that are part of the competition can all be done one at a time with these basic pieces. There is a TON of robotics that kids can learn from just the base Spike Prime Education set.

This challenge in particular requires a skill that is extremely useful in the FLL competition world. Namely, to build an attachment using gears to create an arm of the robot that can operate in a particular way. That was also the intent of my knocking over a tower challenge. However, while that one could hypothetically be solved without creating an arm that moves, this one would be much more tricky.

This one is also slightly more challenging than the previous tower-knocking challenge, because the gears need to turn in different places. One gear will lie flat and the other will stand vertically in order to get that up-and-down motion. Of course, kids could redesign their robots completely, but I’m assuming that they start with the base robot described here.

The challenge and my solution in particular will be described in detail below. In case you have missed any of the previous challenges in this 6-part series, here they are for your reference. If you want to be notified of future challenges, feel free to sign up for my newsletter!

• Spike Prime Challenge 1: Moving to a Square
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 2: Avoiding an Obstacle
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 3: Pushing an Object
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 4: Using a Distance Center for Navigation
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 5: Knocking Over a Tower
  
• Spike Prime Challenge 6: Lifting a Square (*this post*)

Spike Prime Challenge: Lifting a Square Details

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: This took my kids about 20 minutes, but it could be more or less!
Difficulty: Medium to Hard
Cost: The LEGO Education Spike Prime Set costs $400 on the LEGO site. As of this writing, it is more expensive on Amazon, but I would check to compare!

The Challenge

The challenge is fairly straightforward. First, set up the starting and target squares as in the Moving a Square challenge. Next create a structure in the target square as shown. The two solid yellow pieces from the Spike Prime Education set will support the blue rectangular frame. (I realize now that I should have called this challenge Lifting the Quadrilateral, not Lifting the Square. )

Once everything is set up, the challenge is to completely remove the blue piece from the two yellow pieces holding it up without knocking over the yellow pieces. If kids get clever and build an attachment that simply pushes it off, congratulate them on their success, then specify that they now have to take the blue frame back to the starting square once they remove it. (This would REALLY replicate a FLL challenge.) By requiring them to pick up the piece and move it somewhere else, odds are that they will find a solution requiring them to create a rotating lever arm.

My Solution

This is the most challenging of these initial series of challenges by far! The kids have to think 3 dimensionally to see how a gear rotating in a horizontal plane can be used to create a level that will move in a vertical plane. (Of course, the kids can always re-design the base robot so that the gear is vertical. I don’t like to remove any options from the table!) All that to say, if you or your child needs to look at my solution for ideas, don’t feel bad! We all learn by modeling others.

As with the distance sensor for navigation challenge, I’m going to start by first showing you three different attachments. The first was built by my 9 and 11-year old, but it didn’t quite fit on the robot, though it still worked, as you’ll see. The next one was my 13-year-old’s design which removed the issue that my younger kids were experiencing. The last one was designed by me, where I took my 13-year-old’s design (yes, I realize I took the easy way out ), but then I arguably improved it by simplifying it.

Here is my younger kid’s design. They figured out that to get the arm to move up and down, you have to interlock the gears perpendicular to each other. I really admire the simplicity of their design. However, you’ll notice that the gear hits the hub, causing the axel to bend slightly. Despite this, they were able to complete the challenge!

Next, here is my teen’s attachment. He took the originally attachment that the younger kids made and redesigned it so that it would fit onto the car better. This one also works, though it is slightly more complicated!

Here’s my design after I started with my oldest’s and removed the pieces I felt were unnecessary:

And here is my code! Note that I finally got around to figuring out how far one rotation would move the car and adding in a line of code so that I could tell the car exactly how far to go. There was still quite a bit of trial and error, however!

Good luck completing this challenge! If you’d like to share pictures of your attachment with me, I’d love to see them!

Related Links

Robotics Activities for Kids
Science Activities for Kids
All Learning Activities

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