I am over the moon excited to be joining The Educators’ Spin On It, Little Wonder Days, and Parents Teach Play for a weekly linky party called “After School Link Up”. As many of you know, I am a homeschooling mama to 4 beautiful children, so you might be wondering how this fits in with “after school”. Well, the after school linky party is a place to find activities that you can do with your child at home for ages 5+. So, it’s perfect for the homeschooling mom OR those with children in school.
As a former teacher, I know the importance of graphic organizers, especially for reading comprehension. A KWL chart is such a simple organizer that works well in the classroom. I remember having the class huddled around the chart. I’d introduce our next topic of study in social studies or science and we’d start to fill in the K {What do you already KNOW?} and W {What do you WANT to know?} of the chart. I would usually run out of room on the chart, especially with all the things the children wanted to know as students played off of each others’ questions.
This hasn’t been my experience with the KWL chart in the homeschool setting, especially when using it with just my oldest {ALuv, currently 7.5). He could tell me plenty of things he knew about the subject, but when we’d get to the W column, you could hear crickets chirping. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to know and there weren’t other kids to interact with. I had honestly almost given up on using one until I got an idea {in the middle of the night, mind you}. Why not let him interact with books to fuel his questions?
So, for our unit study on animals, I gathered as many non-fiction books from around the house about animals and plopped them down on the floor. {It was at least 30 books}. After we’d filled out the K column, I said, “Now, I want you to look through these books. Look at the pictures, read the words you can and see if some questions pop in your mind…things you wonder about as you’re looking through.” Oh, my! The difference. He didn’t even get through the 1st book and he already had 4 questions. Each time, I responded with, “What a great question! Write that in your W column.” While he didn’t write down every question, I was greatly pleased with the results!
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We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children’s lives after their day at school or on the weekend! When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you’re giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or Feature on our After School Party next week! Don’t forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community.
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