The "Hands On" CM Learning Challenge!

So CM does include nature study and handicrafts. I would try to alternate more hands on and less hands on subjects. I don’t know how hands on your child needs to be. Narration need not always be verbal. They could draw for it or perhaps do some other more hands on activity. Things like labelling maps, writing and drawing in a book of centuries are all good. I am not a huge fan of lapbooks but if you can make them substantive and not too twaddly that works too.

Nebby

http://www.lettersfromnebby.wordpress.com

I mix CM method with tried and true hands on. While I adore nature study, handicrafts, etc they do nothing for learning about, say, how a radio works or how chemicals work together. Buying a few well selected science kits or utalizing a sciene experiment book once per week or month (what ever works for you) will only enhance your lessons. A book like My Body (I don’t know the ages of your children) where you make a life size copy of your child’s body outline and add photo copies of organ printout patterns one at a time while learning their function can be fun and very educational.

I don’t know if my dd would ever learn math without lots of hands on .

After graduating 3 children, yes, I am very confident in this method.

We do a lot of hands on, but not for every lesson. For example after reading time my son narrates back to me and sometimes we leave it at that, but often we do an additional activity, like making one of the characters out of beeswax clay or painting a watercolor picture of a scene in the book. For science we do a lot of drawing of what we saw while we explored the woods and bring back treasures for our nature table. To answer your questions: I can tell the hands on gives my son time to process the concept or subject he is learning and therefor it sinks in. For ideas, I look on pinterest or blogs. Sometimes I just think of them myself and then post the hands-on activity to my bog for others to see and as time goes by, I build on the original activity. (You, in a creativity spurs on more creativity kind of way.) I do till use the CM method as the hands-on activities are meant to supplement the method. An easy way for me to tell if we are getting caught up in twaddle is if I feel compelled to toss out the activity as soon as we are finished.

project based homelearning – she has book and a website.

Sometimes hands on includes using letter tiles rather than printing, sentences on cards and he orders them.

We journal (“write stories”) about our Lego creations, make stop-animation shorts iwth Lego and playmobil.

There’s more in my brain but it is late.