One of the great things about Homeschools, is the flexibility in curriculum.
Though tremendously important, it’s not all academics.
A strong work ethic, confidence and being efficient take you a long way toward success. They’re also important traits in entrepreneurs. The following post shows a series of projects I’m using to work on these character traits in my 4 and 5 year old. I start, by giving the kids a stake in the improvement of the property.
In 2017, we moved into a newer home on a larger piece of property. The open yard is 1/2 acre on a 3 acre wooded lot.
It’s important as parents we instill the knowledge in our children that nothing in life comes free. This 4 in 1 set of home school projects has double meaning. Every project requires hard work. Each project produces benefits and a better quality of life. The kids are being taught to be efficient, because every project is being worked on at once for short medium and long term goals.
The project has 4 parts:
1. A hiking path/trail to create access to the wooded portion of the property. The trail will also provide a nice place to go for nature walks, and a source for future projects.
2. Preparing materials for and starting a garden. We’re going to eat good food.
3. Collecting fire wood for the woodstove. We’re going to have nice fires in Winter.
4. The children’s swing set. Enough said.
The Trail
I first started the hiking trail by clearing saplings, downing low hanging limbs, and brush along the route with my saw. There’s more to do, but this gives you a basic idea of what I’m aiming for.
The result is a 6 foot wide trail basically around the perimeter of the property. There will be a short loop and a long loop. The short loop will be about 1/8th of a mile, the long loop about 1/4 mile.
Preparing organic material for the Garden
As I cleared, I created brush and limb piles with the green leaves attached. The children dragged limbs to the pile for me and piled them as they could. These piles will continue to be put through my wood chipper.
The chips are being put to use in the garden as ground cover to decay into soil.
Collecting Firewood for the woodstove
The Larger pieces from the clearing suitable to be split for the wood stove are being stacked along the trail to be gathered up later for splitting. The children stacked the logs for me as I cut them.
The $50.00 Swing set
I took a few of the smaller (6″) diameter trees, a few bolts, a plank and some rope, and built the kids a swing set for about Fifty bucks. Kids don’t need elaborate outdoor buildings and playsets that cost a small fortune. You all probably know of the Eight hundred to Three Thousand dollar plus elaborate play grounds you can have installed. They are certainly nice, but not within my means. There are plenty of public parks that have the elaborate play sets to take the kids to when they want a bit more. A lot of local taxes go to those playgrounds. I’ve paid the taxes, so we use those playgrounds. No sense in redundant expenses. Meanwhile, the swing set we built is already a year old, and still going strong.
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