Fun and Educational

A while back, I mentioned that right now we are allowing Tyson (who’s 5) to learn at his own pace about things that interest him, enhance his love for learning, and peak his curiosity rather than using a set curriculum and following the more traditional form of homeschooling.  So today, I thought I would share a few things that we have found to be really fun and interesting for him as well as educational. 

One of his favorite things to watch right now are the Popular Mechanics for kids DVDS.  He’s really into mechanics and how things work.  He just has questions about everything these days, so these dvds are right up his alley.  So far, he has only watched the few episodes that we’ve found at the library.  But he loves them so much that he watches them over and over, literally soaking everything up.  And many times we’ve ended up re-checking them back out to watch over and over again.  He is learning so much from them and after watching them, he will tell us the most random things.  Like, “The dome is the strongest shape there is.”  Or the other day, at lunch, he was putting his fingers in his juice and pushing the ice cubes around and he said, “Science tells us that water is displaced.”  Mine and Tim’s eyes about popped out of our heads when he said that and we were like, “How do you know that?!”. 

For Christmas, he is getting this set of DVDs

  

 

Another line of dvds we found that he loves are the The Big Adventure Series.  Although I linked to the website, you can find most of these on Amazon for much cheaper.  These dvds take you behind the scenes to explore how things work, how things are made, and how things are done.  We’ve found that they are not only interesting for the kids, but also for parents too.  So far, his favorite is, The Big Auto Plant in which you “watch how a car is made - from the engineers' drawings to the final touches on the assembly line”.  He is fascinated with cars and gears.  The other day, as we were getting into our van, Peyton asked me how a car works.  I said, that I didn’t know.  Tyson immediately perked up and gave us a full rundown on what happens with the pistons and gas explosions in the engine.  Yet again, I was blown away with what has learned.

Here are a few dvds, but there are many more on the website and on Amazon.

          

  

 

Recently, I came across, The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library.  These are fun rhyming books packed full of information about the natural world like bugs, seeds, mammals, our bodies, reptiles, and outer space.  They are both entertaining, fun to read, and educational.  We love them and we read these over and over too.  I’m in the process of building these into our home library. 

  

 

  

 

Another book we love that is also highly educational is The Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science and Nature.  Those lovable, silly Berenstein Bears give a great introduction to simple machines, forms of matter, energy, months of the year, and seasons. 

 

A fun way to introduce your kids to classical music is with Beethoven's Wig.  It takes “snippets of 11 classical music staples--Beethoven, Bach, Mozart” etc. and puts them with silly lyrics that will have your kids giggling and squealing with laugher as they sing along…. at least that’s what mine do.

 

And last, but not least, Tyson is loving the Little House on the Prairie audio cd right now and often asks to listen to it when we’re driving in the car.  It’s a heart-warming classic based on the real-life adventures of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I read these books growing up and I love sharing these stories with my kids.  It takes us back to a time in which houses and furniture were built from cut trees, cooking was done over an open fire, and run-ins with Indians and wolves were daily occurrences.