All Hands-On Deck!

The hands-on portion of the TOG curriculum is key in our ability to customize.  It is widely known that children have different learning styles.  It is easy to believe in a large classroom full of students, but I have seen it to be equally true with even just a few lower el. students in our family.  Some kids learn best by doing; even my ones who don't enjoy "getting their hands dirty" every once in a while.  One great thing about TOG is the wide variety of options for fun educational hands on projects. 

Salt dough map of various land forms

While we really enjoy doing the smaller weekly hands on projects, some of our best experiences  have been the larger projects that have taken up to 5 weeks to complete.  The curriculum lays it all out for us showing us what to accomplish each week in order to finish on time.  I have honestly been surprised by some of the projects we have done over the past two years from salt dough maps, to display boards, to YouTube videos.

Large map of South America (notice all the white out?)

We have one poster board sized map of South America that we are all particularly fond of.  It was a project from last year and it still hangs in our den.  My kids enjoy looking at it and comment on it, still, from time to time.  Just this last week my kindergartener had it down and was lying on the floor looking at the pictures of the flora and fauna representing the different countries.

Another thing I love about the larger hands on projects is they give us the opportunity to see how important it is to break down large tasks into smaller bite sized pieces.  In this way we have been able to accomplish some of the bigger things we have really been proud of.   

A beautiful boy with his Legos

Here is a link to our world famous YouTube production using Lego guys and hot glue.  We did this for a play writing assignment from Writing Aids.

Lego Star Wars Jedi Defeat the Death Star   

(OK - it's super amateur, but this is what you call quality time with a 3rd grader, and my son's eight year old friends loved it!)

Display board illustrating the differences between life for the soldiers on the front and the families left at home during WWII.