I can just hear it now!
FLASHCARDS?? What's so fun about drilling with flashcards? It seems so monotonous...institutionalized. Isn't that what we are trying to avoid by homeschooling our children?
YEP! I wholeheartedly agree. I have no desire to tediously drill a stack of flashcards while my child rattles off answers like a monotone robot. But, that doesn't mean that flashcards and repetitive drill have NO PLACE in my homeschool. On the contrary, I use flashcards all the time. In fact, I have an entire basket and a huge dresser drawer overflowing with them!
My excessive flashcard collection has become my primary resource for adding some JAZZ to our math and phonics review. They are the perfect addition to a fun review game or activity.
I'll admit, it can sometimes be difficult to provide a review GAME as a homeschooler when you only have a classroom roster of ONE. Over the next five days, I will be sharing a few of my favorite activities for Adding Some FLASH to Flashcard Review.
Need more game ideas? Be sure to check out these others.
*I've joined with 22 other bloggers from iHomeschool Network for a winter Hopscotch full of homeschooling ideas. Head on over and check out all 110 posts.
What a GREAT topic!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I think so many homeschoolers shy away from using flashcards because it seems too much like traditional school. But it doesn't have to be that way.
DeleteI agree, we don't have to shy away from them. We used flashcards for math facts especially, and they've done wonders to give my son a rock-solid mastery of both addition/subtraction and multiplication/division. I didn't know any of these fun ideas, but I did have him start wayyyyy across at one corner of the living room, while I sat at the table in the kitchen (just far enough that he could still see the cards). For every correct answer within the time allotment, he moved toward me a step. If he was not within the time allotment, he had to stay in place. If he got it wrong, he had to go BACK a step. Flashcard drill was over when he reached me.
ReplyDeleteI will be sharing a similar idea with some variations in an upcoming post of this series.
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