K'Nex Day

We are down to the last 5 days of homeschool.  Most of my kids' friends are already out of school. 

They're ready to be done.

I'm ready to be done.

So what are we going to do?


It's funny - the whole idea of homeschooling appealed to me because our kids could learn at their own pace and that we could learn in creative ways.  I pictured our family doing puzzles, playing games, and creative play every day.

Instead, for 8 months of the year, we are working hard on core academic subjects.  We don't have time to fiddle around with puzzles and fun things because we need to learn our multiplication facts and grammar basics.  My kindergartner needed to learn how to read in 20 easy lessons - and we've only finished 9 lessons by the end of the year.  Granted each lesson was 19 pages, but still...I always think we're going to be farther along by May.  Ah well...

We are done with testing.  We have had our portfolios evaluated.  

So here we are, and they're ready for some fun. 

Me too, me too!

This morning I came up with the bright idea of building our K'Nex roller coaster.  Hey - it's sorting, following directions, engineering - totally counts.  It's gotta be a STEM activity, right?

When my 9-year-old asked, "What fun stuff do you have planned for today?"  Why doesn't every school day start like that?  As soon as I revealed the roller coaster idea, she was psyched.  So much so that she began to make a grand plan - let's build a Ferris Wheel, too.  She began to draw queue lines and sidewalks.  She decided to incorporate a Little People zoo and other toy sets we had around the house to make an entire theme park.  As you can tell, she doesn't do anything half way.

It took about an hour to build the swing ride with my girls.  Each had their own box of K'Nex and searched for the pieces we needed, step by step.  While I was busy building the structure, my oldest constructed a robot out of K'nex and my kindergartner made funny things like a hairbrush and a vacuum. 

Once we had finished building the set, we discovered there were multiple problems with the design.  Most importantly, they couldn't put any of their toys are figures on the seats for a ride.  Except some Shopkins. (I think this is Jade Spade and Freddy Fork) 

So we worked together to redesign the ride seat. 

BEFORE   (Totally lame)

AFTER (room for this baby, and my daughter added the safety bars so the baby wouldn't fall out)

We then realized the bar was too long and the baby was too close to the ground, so we chose shorter bars and constructed 3 more safety seats.  Once those were built, we discovered Shopkins would fall out of our newly designed seats, so we made a special shopping bag seat for them.  We also realized that Shopkins were much lighter than our other figures, so we added weight to balance out the ride by doubling the Shopkins ride seat capacity.

And yes, it really works.  Powered by a hand crank and gears.


We were troubleshooting, designing, building.  It was glorious!!  Why don't we do this more often during the year?

Each year of homeschooling (this is #4 for us), I learn more.  Every year, I learn to lighten up more, because the kids are learning all the time.  Sometimes I need to let go of regimented learning to allow for creative play and outside-the-box thinking.  More and more, I am convinced that kids do their best learning when they are at play.

You may recall that I started out with the idea of building our roller coaster.  It didn't happen today, but maybe it will tomorrow.  I'm ready for some more fun!!