October 2011 Archives

Halloween is just around the corner, and while most of us will have fun with candy and costumes, there are also plenty of ways to make the holiday a learning opportunity for your homeschool students.

For example, once you get back from trick-or-treating with a bucket full of loot, you can use the candy for math lessons. For younger kids, Surf Net Parents has some sorting and estimating activities, while older students can learn about calorie content and graphing with these exercises from Education.com.

If it's science lessons you're looking for, check out these awesome candy experiments--you can use your Halloween spoils to learn about density, pH, and more! Red, White & Grew also has some anatomy activities that go perfectly with all the spooky skeletons and fake blood on October 31.

What better way to study literature on Halloween than to read Washington Irving's classic short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"? This Red, White & Grew post links to the original version, a children's adaptation, and Disney's take on it (something for all ages!), while Connect the Thoughts has a Washington Irving literary guide on sale for the Halloween season.

The holiday also offers a great opportunity to learn about other cultures. This infographic details spooky superstitions from around the world, while this Soul Travelers 3 post discusses Halloween celebrations in different countries. And of course, the day after Halloween is Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, which you can learn more about here.

And a good old-fashioned Halloween lapbook ties it all together.

How do you plan to homeschool this Halloween? What are your favorite homeschooling ideas from Halloweens past? Let us know in the comments!

Last Friday, Thinkwell got the opportunity to give back to our community through the Entrepreneur's Foundation's annual Fall Service Day. This year, over 500 volunteers from almost two dozen companies came to Austin's Zilker Park to build park benches, weed out invasive plant species, plant wildflowers, and much more.

Thinkwell volunteers were assigned to the Rattlesnake Team, which meant that we got to help clean up the Umlauf Sculpture Garden. The Sculpture Garden is apart from the rest of Zilker in a shady grove full of compelling artwork and verdant plant life--in short, you'd be hard-pressed to think of a more beautiful place to spend the day raking leaves and clearing debris from pathways to make them more wheelchair-accessible.

At lunch, a series of speakers from Austin's Parks and Recreation department taught us about the park's importance. From hosting festivals like Austin City Limits to helping preserve the habitat of the Barton Springs salamander, Zilker plays many roles in the community--plus the playgrounds and swimming areas make it a fantastic place for kids! Thinkwell is proud to have played our part in keeping Zilker Park and the city of Austin beautiful.

Photo courtesy of Umlauf Sculpture Garden website.