My middle child is 3.5, a boy, and as wild as they come. He can barely sit still for a moment and is just a constant blur of noise and movement as he runs wildly around outside most of the day. His nicknames include “Firecracker”, “Wolf Pup”, and “Mowgli” to name a few. As you can imagine, I could not picture him sitting quietly at the table tracing letters like his older sister did, so I was wondering how I was going to come up with a good method for him…
After reading other blogs and articles, I learned that active children actually learn better while being active. When they’re trying to sit still, it takes so much brain power for them to focus on staying still (it’s so unnatural to them) that it takes away from what they could be doing if they were learning while being allowed to move. So I started trying to think of fun jumping games…
…And then along came a giant trampoline!
Seeing as all my little boy wanted to do was spend all day every day leaping around on the trampoline, I thought I might as well give it my best shot. I brought chalk and a speaker for music out to the trampoline.
I’d show him how to draw each letter with chalk on the trampoline. (After you jump on it the drawings erase again). Then we’d think of a word that could bounce or run that started with the letter (A for Acrobat, B for Bouncing Balls, C for Cars, etc) and we’d leap around the trampoline acting out the word. Then while jumping, we’d try to make the shape of the letter with our bodies (A is your hands pointed up above your head and legs spread wide, G is a somersault with a kick at the end for the hook).
He had SO much fun! I’ve never seen him so excited about learning letters! He’d never even shown any interest in learning to write them before! Now he couldn’t seem to learn them fast enough. I did two different “school” sessions on the trampoline throughout the day, and I ended each one around letter F or H instead of trying to get through the whole alphabet- that way it stayed fun and he didn’t get burned out. At the end I’d turn the music up really loud and we’d “party” on the trampoline to celebrate all the good learning we did.
It was pretty great seeing him leaping wildly around the trampoline yelling “G IS FOR GORILLA!” over and over!
Homeschooling Outside the Box 