Homeschool Fun Days: Vikings

Whether you're teaching at a homeschool co-op, or just trying to bring subjects to life for your own reluctant learners, mini, fun based learning units are a must. 

If you’re new here, I’m Tonya Johnson, founder of Helping Hearts Ministries where I specialize in helping ministry minded homeschool moms educate the next generation for Jesus. I believe that it’s important to stay ahead of the crowd when it comes to keeping the attention of our children. As homeschoolers, we have the unique advantage of being able to tailor our child's education in a way that fosters that child/parent relationship and ignites their love for both learning and Jesus. The world is fighting for their hearts; we need to fight 10x harder. 

I'm currently teaching through different time periods in history for our middle school co-op, so I'm creating mini (90 min long) lesson plans that incorporate all five sense. For the Pilgrim/Mayflower lesson plan we have:

You can download all of the resources for this lesson by enrolling in our Homeschool Made Fun Academy. By ordering through this link, you'll get your first pack for free and then each month you'll receive a new pack with new learning centers as well as 50+ character building and fun, themed activity pages for only $5. Check out the highlight video of our "pilgrims/mayflower" class here. So now that you have the 30k foot overview, let's dive in to each section individually. Some of these are affiliate links, some of these are just links I've pulled off of websites, so I can share certain products with you. 

If you're not familiar with Seat Work, it's simply work that can be done independently either during the first few min of class, or before class starts while kids are arriving. Some teachers use busy work for this. Personally, I prefer to create seat work that goes along with that day's lesson. 

For this lesson, the seat work was either a coloring page or a word search. Each kid chose which fun option they'd like to do. Both options, along with all other printable materials for this class are part of the "Homeschool Made Fun Academy". See the example below for this week's seat work options.

Remember to keep the lesson to 10-15 min with lots of kid interactions. I passed a copy of the lesson to each kid with vocabulary words colored. Each time I came to one of the colored words they were instructed to raise their hand if they knew what the word meant. I also have corresponding flashcards that I stuck up on the board as we went over each word. 

This link will give you step by step directions on how to make rune necklaces, and then the Homeschool Made Fun Academy has pendant templates you can print and cut out. 

This game was so much more fun than I even envisioned! We had longship races, and the only thing you need is a sheet. You can play this in groups of 4+ kids with as many as 10-12 depending on how big your sheet is. We used a queen sized sheet and groups of 8 students. Have the kids put the sheet over their heads (each child holding on to a piece of the sheet). When you say go, they run to a designated area and back as a team. If someone falls off the boat (lets go of the sheet), the whole team has to start over. If you have a big enough space, you can have the teams race at the same time. Our room was only large enough for one group at a time, so we simply used a timer. Fastest time to the end of the room and back won. 

At the end of class, the kids enjoyed skyr parfaits (yogurt parfaits made with skyr yogurt just like the vikings used to eat). Before class started, I passed out the snack cards (included in Homeschool Made Fun Academy), and had each student circle what flavor they wanted along with yes or no for granola added on top. My teacher's aide collected the cards and made the parfaits as I was teaching the lesson, then the kids enjoyed their snack while they had their note booking time. Below is a picture of how I had them use their notebooks to memorize their vocabulary words from this unit. 

This mini unit is included with your October "Homeschool Made Fun Academy" Subscription. If you enroll after October, you'll get immediate access to the vikings unit as well as all other completed units. 

The shocking truth I hear often in my DMs from many of you is that you want to throw all of the homeschool fun days, but you just don’t have the finances. I’d love to tell you that it’s not expensive, but I’d be lying. Yes, even dollar store supplies add up.
Now, I’m not saying you have to spend thousands of dollars, but I’ve been in your position. I’ve been in the place where $100 felt like thousands of dollars because we just didn’t have it in the budget
Here’s what I’ve found. Social media is a gold mind for homeschool moms, IF you know how to use it.
Courses
Math and Literacy Centers
Unit Study Packs
Curriculum Planners
Kids’ Subscription Services (Themed Activities)
These are just 5 of 100s of products that my students learn to make through the Homeschool Creator Course. If you can dream it, we can help you create it
Interested? Click Here for more info. 

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