Learning Quests

This is a long strand of DNA built  by Mr. SP using Zoob.

There were a lot of things I had in mind to do this summer that did not happen.  Fortunately there were also a lot of great things that I didn’t plan or predict that DID happen, but still, every year at the end of summer I tend to feel a lot of regret and guilt, and a lot of angst over the start of the new school year.

So, today I am going to focus on something that I wanted to successfully implement, and it actually worked!

While I’m all about flexibility and down time in the summer, and I’m fine with bored kids who find amazing  things to do simply because they are so bored, I also want my kidlets to do a little math practice along with all the reading they naturally do.  I want them to creatively explore in artistic ways.  I have a few academic areas that I want to supplement in the summer because of course there are important aspects of their education that their excellent teachers are simply not able to get to at school.  At the same time, if I told them we are going to sit down and do something educational, there would be uproarious protests.

When the middle kidlets were home for the week and not so much was going on I handed them a sheet of paper on Monday morning entitled “Learning Quest.”  The Banana and Mr. SP each got lists of activities that were taylor made for what I wanted them to focus on.  The options were divided into categories (for example: math, typing, literacy, geography/history, art, etc.).  Each category had many choices of activities, and instructions to choose a certain number of activities from each section to complete in order to finish the learning quest by Friday.  The activities included things like:

• Write a letter to mail to someone
• Write an adventure story
• Create a map of a medieval City
• Draw a picture of your pet snail
• Make a geometric design with colored blocks
• Complete Tangram and Pentomino puzzles
• Work on geography map puzzles
• Play math games on the ipad
• Practice typing with Mavis Beacon
• Work with Montessori math materials
• Painting projects
• Building labyrinths out of LEGOS.

There were many, many choices included in each learning quest, which was a big part of the success of this project.  All the options were good, but the kidlets had the freedom to choose whichever activities they thought were the most interesting.  Many of the choices changed from week to week, but some stayed the same from learning quest to learning quest.  Each kidlet that completed the learning quest by Friday got to go out for ice cream on Saturday. (I’m not opposed to external motivation).  Some weeks the learning quests were only partially completed, but I still considered that a success because the kidlets were working on projects and practicing skills/creativity that they probably wouldn’t have without a little direction.   No one had to work on a learning quest if they didn’t feel like it.  The project gave each person a lot of latitude and autonomy, and it was really fun to see what they came up with when they did work on the activities.  It also helped out during boring days, because my favorite response for “I’m bored,”  the summer was, “You could work on your learning quest!”