“Stations”, an idea from Lori

Because my friend Lori is too busy actually teaching her children to post about this, I am going to share with you the idea she shared with me.  She calls it “stations” which is descriptive but perhaps uninspired.

She sets up multiple stations (usually three, since she has three children) in the house and explains them to her kids.  Then they cycle through the stations, having a set time for them.  Brilliant, eh?  It takes work on the set-up end, but apparently there are a gazillion ideas for what your stations could be on Pinterest.  And then you have  x minutes as they cycle through them to make lunch or hang laundry or– gasp!– read Gaudy Night.

Here are our stations from last Friday:

Free Rice on the computer (it’s a vocabulary game by which the player donates rice to the World Food Programme by successfully matching two synonyms).

Complete the puzzle of Africa:

Learn to crochet a chain stitch:

Work in the garden (cutting down the old raspberry canes and digging up dandelion plants):

Make a mosaic of a letter to go into our Easter banner (though each child only saw his/her own letter and didn’t know the end result):

Copy this painting:

Free Rice was the most popular station, but all the stations were fully utilized, and I have to call it a success.

There were multiple unanticipated bonuses in this project.

1) It was interesting/exciting enough to M that it worked as an incentive for her to get her work done in a timely fashion, because it was something in which the children could participate only if their other daily work was done… but that we didn’t have to leave the house to do, so I wouldn’t have been punishing anyone else if I had to follow through on my promise not to let her do it.  (She quickly did her other work with a minimum of fuss and was able to participate.)

2)  The projects that feel like a ton of set-up/clean-up for me (e.g., painting for four) became easier (i.e. painting for 1, with fresh paper) so that I  didn’t mind that it only took each of us 6 minutes to complete the replica of the painting.

3) A task that would normally have been a “chore” (garden work) became five minutes of fun– “see how many raspberry canes you can cut and bind in five minutes.”  And five minutes from each of them added up to a lot of raspberry canes.

This may become a Friday staple for us.  What would your stations be?