Fulltime Mama My name is Elizabeth, and I am the happy wife of ten years to Fabio and fulltime mama to four beautiful children: Joshua-9, Dominique 7, Israel- almost 5, Johann-3 and expecting a new baby in April 2012! We are currently living in Brazil as missionaries and life never ceases to be an adventure!!! I love motherhood with a passion and am passionate about providing a place here at MamaKnowsBest where mothers can learn, grow, and share ... pooling the wisdom of many into one big jackpot for mothers. View all articles | Contact author

School In a Box

A few years back, at a homeschool convention, I heard the idea of "school in a box".  At $20, I could not purchase it, but I thought we could put something similar together on our own. If you do wish to buy one, they can be purchased at www.joyceherzog.com.  I save this for "special" times, usually when we are not at home and I know I will need to keep the children occupied and happy for a period of time, like at the doctor's office, for example.

I used a Tupperware box that had little dividers, but you could use any sort of container. Then I gathered small trinkets and items from around the house, such as:

-Small plastic animals

-a coin

-a button

-a plastic screw

-a ring

-a lego piece or two

-a popsicle stick

-a paperclip

-a few miniatures: a small pitcher, bell, and bathtub

Here are a few we have tried to get your creative juices flowing:

EARLY LEARNING

Name the colors, name the objects, talk about what they are made of (plastic, metal, wood) and what they are used for.

Small children like just putting the objects in the box and taking them back out again, over and over and over!

MATH

-Counting objects, for younger children

-Adding objects. You can put three things on the cloth and ask how many you might have if you added two more.

-Place a number of objects on the cloth and have child estimate how many things are there before counting them.

-Multiplication, for older children. "I have three groups here of four objects each. How many would that be?"

-Division: "There are eight things on the cloth, and there are two of us here. How many would we each get if we divided them up between us?"

SORTING/ CATEGORIZING

Place a few items on the cloth and ask your child to sort them into categories. The child could make up the categories on his own, or you could make suggestions, like round and not-round items, groups by color, groups by size, living and non-living, metal and plastic, etc.  Ask your child to explain how he chose what to put in which category.

LANGUAGE

-Ask child to describe an object or group of objects

-Choose 3-4 objects and ask child to make up a story about them. He can use the objects to act out the story.

-Hand child one object, about which he has to make a sentence, then another object with which he has to make another sentence to add to the "story". If you like, you can write down the story as he makes it up.

-A child learning to write could see how many object names he could write down

-If you would like to write the names of the objects on small scraps of paper, your child that is just learning to read could match the label with the object.