I don’t know about you, but when it comes to homeschooling, I like to include independent learning activities. I may be a homeschool mom, but that’s not all I am. In addition to homeschooling my 4 year old daughter, I also have a rambunctious 18 month old son, a virtual executive assistant business, and, you know, a life outside of homeschooling!
Although my daughter is not yet at the age that I need to follow New York State regulations for homeschooling, come September of next year, they will expect her to be educated for 5 hours per day, 180 days per year. Considering I don’t want to put my son in front of a screen or rely on him to play by himself for hours on end, nor do I want to give up working with my clients, it just wouldn’t be feasible for us to “school at home” and for me to teach for 5 hours straight.
This is where independent learning comes in.
Why do I Focus on Independent Learning?
I hadn’t really thought about the idea of independent learning until about 9 months ago when a fellow blogger and vlogger shared a review of My Father’s World Preschool Curriculum. She shared about surprise boxes and I realized it was something I could implement in our homeschool. We already had our morning binder set up, and this would complement it and build her skills.
From the time I purchased a rolling cart and labeled the bins, my daughter was excited. Just as Sara shared in the video, the bins were labeled 1-5 and I took a baggie and added those numbers to it. I encouraged my daughter to randomly pick a number each day and do an activity in the matching bin. Only, my daughter didn’t want to do just one activity. She would often ask to pick another number after finishing playing with whichever bin she had chosen.
Instead of playing independently for 10-20 minutes, my 3 year old was expanding her attention span and playing independently for 30-40+ minutes. Considering I was still nursing my son at the time, it was really helpful to get a break from interacting with her without her feeling neglected.
For me, that really is the key to independent learning. As a stay at home mom, my kids are constantly there and it’s easy to feel touched out. I often need a brain break to remind myself that I’m an adult and I can do big people things without a constant stream of dialogue. I know there are many moms that will wake up at 5 am for that break, but I am NOT a morning person. When she gets to do independent learning activities, my daughter feels loved and supported and is having fun and/or excited to learn, but I get a break from being part of it all.
Examples of Independent Learning Activities
When I first explored implementing independent learning into our home and homeschool, I was surprised to realize just how many things that a 3 year old could do on her own. Now that she’s nearly 4.5 years old, the amount of things just keeps increasing. Most, if not all, of the activities are opportunities to work on fine motor skills, but they’re all fun for her and are things that my son will enjoy when he gets older, too. Here are (more than) a few of the things I’ve added to her bins:
- Coloring books and crayons
- Dot markers and dot pages
- Building blocks with a drawing of something to try to build follow by free play
- Paintbrush, cup, watercolors, and pages to paint
- Paint by sticker
- Water reveal books
- Stacking rocks
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Diamond art
- Matching/memory games
- Look and find books
- Busy book
- Lacing toys
- Worksheets
- Tweezer activities
- Clothespin activities
- Cutting pages and scissors
- Tracing pages and pencils, crayons, or markers
- Play dough and tools
- LeapFrog reader and book
Final Notes about Independent Learning
The rolling cart that I purchased for this has 5 large drawers and 10 smaller drawers. I use the 5 large drawers to set things up for her to do. We use the smaller drawers for storage. So I have a bunch of coloring books in the smaller drawer, but I only add one book or one page to the larger drawer. If I give her worksheets, I’ll only set her up with one or two in the larger drawer. I’ve noticed that kids will often become overwhelmed by options… like when you tell them to clean up and they can’t figure out where to start so they don’t do anything, but if you give them a specific task they can get it done. So I try not to give many options.
In order to make the activities work most effectively, you can rotate what’s in the bins every few weeks. It’s also good to restrict when they’re allowed to do the activities. If my daughter was allowed to always use the building blocks, they would lose their magic and she wouldn’t necessarily want to play with them when she chose their bin. Instead, they become something special for her to do and she’s excited when she gets to use them. I often arrange that she grabs an activity from the bin when her brother is napping, though this isn’t always the case. For louder activities, she definitely does them at another time. But activities with smaller pieces or things that would be unsafe for my son, she definitely does them when he won’t be underfoot.
If your child wants to do everything with you, try challenging them to do something and then show you. You can ask them to build something, or color a picture, or try to build a stack with as many rocks as they can. They may find it difficult to adjust, but every additional second, every additional minute, of independent learning will be worth it for your sanity and their expanded attention span in the long run!
Thank you for joining us In Our Homeschool.
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This Post Has 21 Comments
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This gave me the inspiration to try this!!!!! Thank you!!!!
I have 5 kiddos, 3 of which are schooling so independent work is vital to my sanity and the success of our schooling. Thanks for some fresh ideas!
Thank you for this very informative post.
Having 3 feral girls who are now 4, 6 and 11, I would not survive the day to day without independent learning activities! I love seeing others take advantage of teaching these skills at a young age because it just makes school work and time management skills easier as they grow!
Independent Learning is the best way to go, in my opinion.
Paint by sticker, look and finds, and cutting pages are favorites in this household.
I schooled those 5 hours at home with my daughter. But since having a son, it isn’t going to happen, in that same way at least. Independent learning to the rescue. I loved your ideas. I hadn’t thought of most of them.
These are great ideas for a child that age to do independently.
This is so important. Thank you for sharing.
I agree
There’s a lot of great ideas in this article!
These are great independent learning ideas as I have a toddler and two kids in upper elementary.
Love this idea!!!! Thanks!
This is an amazing blog post. I got lots of new ideas to implement into our homeschool. Thank You so much!
I really like this idea. I never thought about having them draw numbers as a way to decide what to do for the day. And I appreciate the list of ideas; I always draw a blank in that area.
I started out my daughter with independent leaening when she was younger abd she did great. We’ve since moved and I forgot all about it. I think I’ll implement a few of your activities.
This is a great way for kids to learn on their own and to be more hands-on!!! (While still being right there for whenever they need your help!!) You’ll also get to see what their favorite thing/s to do and possibly encourage those ways to do in other subjects as well.
That’s a great idea not overwhelming kids with options, adults too. Independent learning is a good thing to teach, so that kids can learn to be independent and to do things on their own. So many educators want to entertain kids or to not have them think for themselves, so learning this soft skill is good for kids.
My kids dont really do Independent Learning, they have math and ELA they do online without me but that is not really Independent Learning.
My daughter is 4 and DAILY she seems to be progressing. Like I knew she was smart but recently shes been blowing my mind and some of these activities are some great ideas to try with her!