I was reading my favorite homeschool forum and came across a question from a mom who had just moved and was now having trouble getting her son to focus on his school work. This got me thinking about how we turned moving into our new house into a learning experience.
Moving is a big deal and can really mess with your schedule so my first tidbit of advice would be to not worry if you don't get school in every day! Take a few weeks off if you need to, but if you wanted to throw a few activities in here and there here are a few that I suggest.
Depending on if you built your house or moved into one already finished you may have to adjust some of these to suit your own needs.
Watching our house being built was an amazing experience for our children. We actually built in the same neighborhood that we were already living in (just needed a bit more space with babe #3!) so we had the added convienience of being over to drive over to check on progress often.
1. Take pictures of the stages of the house building process and make a book with them.
2. Talk about what an engineer does.
3. Talk about the math involved with building a house.
4. Use an online program or graph paper to design a house.
5. Build your house out of toothpicks or popcicle sticks to scale.
6. Measure your moving boxes and do the math to find out how many items of a certain size and shape will fit into the boxes.
7. Take several items of various shapes and sizes and have your child pack the box in the most efficient way they can.
8. If you are close enough to your new house to drive or walk to it figure up the number of miles to it.
9. Have your child look at a map and plan the best route to the new house. You can do this even if it is far away!
10. Go to the new house and have your child figure up the square footage in each room.
Once you have moved in you may want to:
1. Take a walk around the neighborhood and talk about nature around the new home.
2. Go on a drive and find your neighborhood helpers (fire station, police, post office).
3. Bake cookies and go meet your new neighbors!
4. Take a family photo in front of your new home and add it to your book you made.
5. Have your child figure up a loan with interest.
6. If you have an older child you may want to talk about all of the other expenses involved with moving (closing costs, realtor fees)
7. Talk about what makes a house feel like a home.
8. Figure up how many gallons of paint you would need to paint your child's room.
9. Let your child help unpack!
10. Go out and let your child pick out something special for his or her room.
Moving is daunting for adults and can be a stressful experience for everyone. Making it a fun learning experience will help break up the stress and keep your child learning while having fun during the process!
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