Plan an outreach project!

 Project Based Learning or PBL is really a process.  Let me walk you through an outreach project, Apple-ka-dabra, a kindergarten, outreach program.  At the time, Musselman High School, where I taught, were the Applemen.  Everything was about apples—hence Apple-ka-dabra!  The outreach was a hands-on science program.  High School volunteers picked and prepped hands-on science experiments.  These teens hauled all of the materials to a neighboring school and spent the morning doing hands-on stations with the entire group of kindergarteners, and cleaned up after. We did this outreach for a friend’s private school once, too.  Later, the Co-op teens led an outreach to Head Start kiddos, who met in the Knights of Columbus building.  There are pix from Apple-ka-dabra at bottom.

1. Here is the list of activities, books, and materials we used.  We had a coloring station.  We just copied sciency coloring pages and had a basket of crayons on hand.  We usually had a reading station with sciency books.  

2. Planning involved selecting hands-on activities.  Our list has time-tested hits for kiddos aged 4-6. BTW color-changing nail polish is a huge hit.

3. Once you select your activities, determine how many kiddos will be in the group.  This is essential to budget.  Our groups had between 50-150 kiddos participating.  You need to determine the costs!

4. Prep before the event.  It takes time to prepare all of the solutions, sort, and box materials.  Be sure to filed-test every experiment.  Save loads and loads of bottles for Cartesian divers and Tornado bottles; one or two liter bottles work well.

5. Set up early.  Have plenty of tables to act as stations.  We set up a station outside near a hose for tornado tubes, which inevitably leak.  Save grocery bags for the kiddos to put their goodies they make.  We sought t-shirts from thrift stores and our homes for the kiddos to wear over their clothes and take home.  Have extra baggies available to take home instant snow, magic sand, slime, etc.  Everything goes in the grocery bags.  

6.  Enlist extra help for clean-up.  Plan to mop the floor and wipe down tables and chair.  Someone needs to box all of the materials, too.  

7. Meet with the entire group afterwards to debrief the event.  What could you do differently?  What was a hit or a miss?  Were there any snags which could be avoided?  Be sure to thank everyone!  Outreach projects are enormously rewarding.  The teens learn leadership skills.  You won’t believe how excited the kiddos get after a few hours of fun!  

How do you develop meaningful projects?

 I am no stranger to developing projects for kiddos.  The most successful projects are meaningful and have a purpose.  In another life I wrote grants at the school where I taught.  The grants were based on projects the high school kids wanted to do.  We had a huge club.  What did we do?  Projects took a variety of forms: prom dress closet, hands-on science outreach to kindergarten, planting hundreds of trees, hydroponics, raised beds—even a green roof.  

For a few years, schools went all-in on Project Based Learning or PBL.  (Bucks Institute has a host of projects.)  Instead of making all of your instruction projects, be selective.  What project would your family  enjoy?  

Let’s walk through some steps using Design a Playground as the project.  Let’s limit the new play space to your own backyard.

1.  Identify a problem.  In this example, the Killarney School wants to improve their playground equipment.  They identified a problem.  They also are using photos to document the issue with their playground equipment.  This is a good place to start.  If you are designing an ideal playground for your yard, take photos documenting the existing space.  Go further and take measurements.  Create a graphic or plan of the yard.  You are constrained or limited by the space in the yard.

2. If money were no object, what would your ideal space be?  Brainstorm ideas.  Make a list of play equipment, fencing, garden areas, forts, etc.  Circle the most practical ideas.  

3. Form a plan.  Create a plan.  Use commercial guides or Map Your Playground suggestions.  

4. Create a budget. Brainstorm costs.  Here are estimated costs for a commercial playground.  Your backyard might be perfect for a Natural Playground.  What do you already have?  What would you like to add?  Where can you find it?  How much would it cost?  Use a spreadsheet.

5. Do you want to fundraise?   The Killarney School is accepting donations.  Instead, what can your family do to fundraise for the playground?  Yard sale?  Mow yards?  Sell stuff on eBay?  I’ve found yard sales to be excellent sources of funds, especially if you have a good location.

6.  Install the playground.  Be sure to document the entire process.  Take photos, include the plans, maps, spreadsheets, and photos.  I like to make a slide deck of the project.  How many hours did you invest in the project?  Who participated?  What were their roles?  What would you do differently?  Answer these questions in a final report. 

7. Add this project to your digital portfolio.  Identify all of the components and skills: budgeting, planning, permits, math, etc. involved in the project.  Does this type of project take more time and effort?  Absolutely!  However, the results are commensurate with the effort.

Go to the Park! Design your own playground!

 The weather’s too nice to stay inside.  Go to a park with a playground!  Here is some playground physics for tykes. This webpage has more about the physics underlying playground equipment.  Here is a Simple Machine Playground Challenge.  This article, Swings and Slides has more about the physics underlying swings and slides.  Go play!  Go home and Design a Playground. Discuss the physics, forces, and simple machines at the playground.  Create a model.  How much would the play equipment cost?  Is it safe?  Is it accessible?  Most of all, is it fun?  Would you like to design the ideal playground for your home or dream bigger?

Decide if you want to make this project a math challenge, a mini-model, playground physics, or a civics proposal.  Your family may have strong ideas about renovating, adding, or creating a new playground.  What are you thinking?  Your home, your neighborhood?  Your town?   You might ask your neighborhood HOA to sponsor a tot lot.  (Ours has a slide, set of two swings, two bouncy toys, and a picnic table.  Our tot lot is fenced—which might make an excellent small project.). 

 Make it a big project for your family.  Use a spreadsheet to compute costs.  Use software below to create scaled graphics.  Create a slide deck with sample images or inspirational photos.  Write your proposal.  First, visit several playgrounds for personal experience and inspiration.  Willowmere Park, Stafford recently renovated their play area.  The cost was nearly $400,000.  The budget included a splash pad.  Dream big!  There is no reason your family can’t submit a proposal to the local council or Board of Supervisors.  Wouldn’t a playground project make an excellent elective?  Think of all the fun doing the research!

Resources:

1. Natural Playground Toolkit and Nature Based Playground Equipment

2. Playground Ideas

3. BYO Recreation

4. Kaboom! DIY Toolkit.

5. Commercial Playground Equipment

Here is an accessible park for inspiration, too! 

Honor Bakery

 Wow!  There are so many honor bake stands on social media.  It’s inspiring! Read What is an Honor-System Bakery?  Near us are honor flower stands, egg stands, and watermelon.  We’re too urban for farm stands.  What a great summer project for your family! Make it an advanced, home economics project.

Plan Summer Projects: Let’s try Food Fads, Trends, and Classics!

 Do you love cooking shows and contests?  I sure do!  It’s time to plan summer projects.  Start writing ideas on craft sticks and put them in a lidded container.  Pull out a craft stick when the kiddos start to get bored this summer.  You need ideas!  Today is for bakers.  Baking is both fun and practical.  Take picture and add this project to your digital portfolio as an Economics, summer, elective course.

1. Focaccia Charcuterie Board and look for Food Network’s reel: Focaccia Bagel Board on social media apps.  More trends are available at Puratos.

2. Sourdough Starter is trending again.  Sourdough recipes never go completely out of style.  I buy instant sourdough  yeast because I do not want another pet or commitment.

3. Make Mookies—muffin cookies.  Try different recipes for Mookies.

4. Try the Dubai Chocolate Desserts.

5. Go classic with Southern Living Magazine’s 12 Baking Projects or these classics.

6. Create your own Baking Bucket List. 

7. Try past viral hits: Cronuts, Piecaken (and its variations), Cherbumple, Baked Dumplings, or The Top Cake Trends for 2026.

Open Court Reading

 First, this post is about the original Open Court program with basal readers. This is NOT The McGraw-Hill program.  You can read more about the program in Let’s Kill Dick and Jane.  Don Potter published an excellent essay explaining more of Open Court Reading’s history and background.  Open Court Reading books have literature: stories, fables, poems, songs, etc. Here is an analysis of the Headway program.  I love these books!  Why?  They have classic stories, part of American culture.  It is hard to find a decent basal reader.  I struggled to find a decent textbook for Paul during COVID.  You do have to devise your own curriculum.  Select words from the passages to form the spelling list.  Use a reading for a dictation.  Let your child do copy work from the textbook.  Use the questions as the basis for paragraphs or short essays.  Most of this material is more suited to younger kiddos, under ten.  Once children read fluently, have them start to read the classics.  

1. Here is the original phonic program with videos for the Program Foundation,  Blue Book, and Gold Book from Paul Wigowski.  Be sure to look at the Teacher’s Guide. Here are the Story Books which align with phonics cards.

2. Scroll down this page to see the books in the Headway Program, intended for grades 2-5.   Here is an analysis of the program.  

3.  Below is the list of 1989 readers.  These textbooks are also anthologies.  It’s not easy, but you may be able to find work books or skill books for this series.  However, you can devise your own curriculum by selecting vocabulary words, spelling, and questions from the textbook.  Just as mentioned above, your kiddos can copy passages, write dictations, and use the dictionary to look up unfamiliar words.  Go old school with vintage books.

You may want to look over California’s Reading Wars Timeline and The Mississippi Miracle Explained.  The Open Court resources above were used by teachers to teach reading with a phonics approach successfully for many, many years.  

Can you teach a Co-op class in 30 weeks?

  Our Co-op begins fright after Labor Day and ends sometime in May.  Regardless, we finish before Memorial Day.  The science and math class meet twice a week, 90 minutes for science and 80 minutes for math, each class.  We are off Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.  This year we had three or four snow days; the ice on our street was too dangerous.  We need at least 30 weeks to teach rigorous math and science classes.

We teach high school level courses.  This year we’re offering Advanced Biology and Geometry.  Last year was Biology and Algebra I.  Next year is Chemistry and Consumer Math.  We also complete most of the book.  I’m on tract to finish 15 of 16 modules in Advanced Biology this year.  Yes, we do the labs!  Some of our students are enrolled in online schools, such as MODG, which requires students complete two-thirds of any textbook taught.  My husband, Rob, uses that as his guide for math courses.  He and I have surveyed math teachers’ syllabi to get an idea how much teachers actually teach.  Next year, Rob is teaching Consumer Math; he has strong opinions on financial literacy.  

How do you finish in 30 weeks?  (Okay, sometimes, we need 32 weeks-especially for Chemistry or Physics.)  Let me explain our process.  First, the kids are expected to do tests, homework, study guides, reading, and projects outside of class.  Occasionally, there is time in class to work on study guides.  If I’m at a good stopping place and have 15 minutes, the teens work on their study guides.  Rob likes for the kids to do their study guides in class before the test; he uses that time to answer questions.  

What do we do in class?  We teach.  Rob introduces concepts and problem sets in a very traditional manner.  He teaches a problem and the students practice with more problems.  Rob is all over the room to make sure the kids understand and show their work.  There are only seven students; the class is informal.  When a student struggles, he or she stays after or meets after lunch.  One students stays after class most Thursdays.  Most of Rob’s time is spent teaching math.  Period.

My science classes are structured differently.  We work in chunks.  This year is Advanced Biology or Anatomy. We spent ten to fifteen minutes at the beginning of class reviewing bones, muscles, lobes, etc.  Lectures or overviews are roughly fifteen minutes, too.  Yesterday, we started Digestion with a slide deck. We did a round-robin tracing the alimentary tract, watched an Amoeba Sisters video, toured the textbook’s module, and completed the two histology labs in the book.  The class does POGILs, labs, and dissections.  Next year’s Chemistey class will be structured similarly.  Instruction or review is limited to ten to fifteen minutes.  The remainder of the class time is invested in labs, concept maps, hands-on activities, such as Putting Ions in Their Hands or balancing equations.  If we’re learning how to name compounds, the teens need to practice.  The tests and projects are assigned to do at home.  However, if a student is bright and masters a concept quickly, I might test him or her in class while his or her peers work on practice.  

How can we finish the book in 30-32 weeks?  Class time is all about instruction.  Period.  We don’t tolerate disruptions or misbehavior.  Those kiddos clean.  We start class on time.  We use the entire class period to teach.  Both of us run a tight ship and want to deliver a good course.  You can, too!