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Sonlight Hands on Activities

My Sonlight hands on activities make Sonlight work for the family who likes a more kinesthetic approach to learning. This page will give you some ideas to incorporate into your core and science Sonlight programs. My three oldest children love creating things centered on our current studies. Here is a list of the Sonlight hands on activities which we have enjoyed doing.

Kindergarten
Science K
Year 1
General Activities
Phoenicians
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Rome
Ancient Greece
Other Religions
Science 1
Science 2
Medieval Studies
Renaissance Hands on Activities
American History Hands on Activities

Sonlight have also put together a collection of fabulous recipes from Sonlight curriculum users in a book called Sonlight Cooks . These recipes will enhance your units with traditional meals. This book covers each core year. There are traditional holiday meals, as well as some yummy wholesome snacks, veggies, main and desert recipes.

Sonlight Hands on Activities
Kindergarten

Introduction to World Cultures

As the core program has lovely scheduled hands on activities, I do not think it is necessary to add more, but do make a point of doing the really interesting ones in “Living Long Ago”.

Just two special ones though:

Week 25 Language Arts
When your child has narrated the poem let them make a fancy border around the writing i.e. if they wrote about the spring flowers let them decorate the borders flowers, if about friends allow them to cut out pictures of friends from old photographs.

Week 34 Core
When the child has memorized her poem let her make a tree from collage materials and you write the poem in it for them.

Sonlight Hands on Activities
Science K

This year is full of such delightful themes to inspire hands on activities to do with your children; here are some ideas for you.

Linked to your science program in chronological order:

Make a seasons chartwith your children. Divide an A4 piece of board into 4. Draw 4 tree trunks on. Label each one in turn by a season. For summer glue on cut out cardboard leaves and red apples, autumn - leaves in red, orange and yellow, winter leave bare and spring leaves in a bright green with pink “blossoms”. Laminate and make a little cardboard arrow for your child to move when appropriate.

An example of a seasons chart

Take your children on a nature walk with a magnifying glass to observe the flower parts they read about in their book. You should return to this place at the change of season for your children to note the changes in the plants and trees

Collect as many seed pods and seeds around. Classify them by colour, size and shape. Make charts from cardboard and cover with plastic sheet or laminate to display.

Collect and press flowers, classify and chart.

Do bark and leaf rubbing in their nature book

Make “skeleton” leaves: Place selected green leaves in a pot with 1 tsp Bicarb and 1 tsp Baking Powder and cover with water. Boil and reduce to a low heat. Stir gently from time to time. Once leaves have softened rub off flesh gently. When complete, bleach the leaves and leave to dry on paper towels. Select strong ones for crafts i.e. mobiles, cards etc

Try and schedule a visit to the aquarium or a pet shop to see some different fish. Play a fishing game with a magnet attached to a stick and string to catch fish drawn by the child with paper clips on. Buy a gold fish in a bowl for the child to look after.

Make a bird tray or table. Put it in a visible spot. Put varying food out each morning and note which birds come to visit. Print out a free bird log here.

You will need Adobe Reader (the latest version is recommended) installed on your computer in order to open and print this bird log and the weather chart further down this page. You can get Adobe Reader here (a new window will open so you can download without leaving this page).

Buy a bird poster for your area and watch for new visitors to the garden. Buy a nesting log and put it in your tree for a nesting pair.

Make a peanut butter and seed bird feeder. First smear peanut butter all over an empty toilet roll, roll it in the birdseed, punch two holes in the one end, thread a pipe cleaner through and hang it in a tree. Watch the birds enjoy it.

Go on a spiders web hunt. When you find it dust it with talcum powder and lift it off onto black cardboard that is pre glued. Display it on bulletin board.

Make an insect collage from old magazines. Laminate them and use them as place mats.

Find out if your museum has an invertebrates section for you to visit

Make Rocharch creatures to show symmetry of butterfly wings. Fold paper in half, reopen. Using 3 primary colours make blobs on one side of the fold. Refold and rub paper together. Reopen. When the painting is dry cut out shape and stick on cardboard, or toilet roll add antenna etc for the butterfly.

Bake bread

Collect rocks and display them.

Follow the sun through the house during the day to see rising and setting position.

Sonlight Hands on Activities
Year 1

Introduction to World History – Part 1

The Year 1 program - being the study of the four ancient civilizations - lends itself to wonderful hands on activities on these cultures. As you work through the Usborne Time Traveler & Usborne World History, you can add many hands on activities.

General Sonlight Hands on Activities
Ancient History

Boats from toothpicks and corks

Boat building is a great Sonlight hands on activity which can be on going as you study the different cultures from Philistines to Phoenician to Greece. We used Balsa wood and even corks and toothpicks.

Pottery making is also a do-all-year-round hands on activity where your children can make bowls, coil pots and clay tablets according to the culture you are studying together.

Feasts and meals are a great way to experience different foods, as well as provide some Sonlight hands on activities. If you belong to a co-op, then why not plan a feast from different cultures day when each family prepares a booth with food from an ancient culture and serves visitors in traditional wear and style? If you prefer you can close each study with a traditional meal.

Weapon making has been another all time favorite for our children. This they have done spontaneously and played out great epics themselves.

Dressing up can be all year round Sonlight hands on activities too. Face Paints are a must in this area.

Sonlight hands on activities
Phoenicians

Make cuneiform tablets using clay and stylus.

Dying clothe is a fun activity. The Phoenicians held the secret to gorgeous colors. Why not tie-dye plain white T-shirts in typical Phoenician colors of pink, blue and purple?

Sonlight hands on activities
Ancient Egypt

Make reed boats

Build Lego pyramids

Visit the museum if they have an Egyptian display. We were able to see a real mummy on loan from the Cairo museum.

Play a mummy game with toilet paper and a willing child to be “mummified”.

Make a shaduf – you will need a large basin, a long sturdy pole, 2 small buckets, a balance (rock) and rope. Fill one basin with water. Place the empty bucket near where your child will stand. Attach the small bucket to one end of the pole and the balance on the other. Create a fulcrum which is halfway along the pole. This could be a V in a branch or a swing bar, or a chair. Let your child stand at the end with the weight attached. Dip the bucket into the full basin ad maneuver the pole so that you can empty the bucket into the empty basin. Continue until your child has transferred the water. WARNING – you will get wet! You could of course make the one shown on page 53 of the World History on a much smaller scale!

Make “papyrus” by weaving paper strips to make a placemat. Let your children decorate them with “hieroglyphics”.

Cosmetics played a great part in the Egyptian woman (and mans) day. Let your children make up their faces in the traditional way described on page 23 of World History.

Sonlight hands on activities
Ancient Rome

Dress up as Romans

– use a sheet for a toga, make wreaths with leaves

Have a day in the life of a Roman child – after you have completed your school work in your togas – choose some games to play from page 74 of Time Traveler and some meals from Sonlight Cooks.

Make a mosaic - This was so popular with our children we repeated it with our Islamic studies but here we allowed any form to be created. Mosaic placemats are easily made using precut hardboard rectangles, wood glue and precut colorful mosaic pieces. When the mosaics are dry, finish the tiles off with grouting in between the mosaic design.

Make a wax tablet - not recommended to do when there are young ones around. Pour melted wax into a tin foil baking pan. When set use a sharp implement to scratch out the Roman numerals

Sonlight hands on activities
Ancient Greece

Make a Catapult according to the instructions on page 71 in World History

Have an Olympic games day

Sonlight hands on activities
Other religions

Islamic Studies

Create a mosaic without using any living form. We made mosaics on placemats and coasters and even bird baths and stepping stones.

Enjoy a traditional Muslim meal.One of our favorite Cape Malay meals is “Roti” filled with a child friendly curry. Click here for our roti and curry recipe.Rotis are similar to a Mexican Tortilla but are of Hindu origin.

Enjoying a traditional roti meal

Judaic Studies

If you do not already celebrate Shabbat on a Friday night, then begin to think about setting this time aside to enjoy the close of a week as father and mother bless their children and share the events of the week in the context of God’s great blessing and provision for your family.

If the Jewish feasts are unfamiliar to you, I suggest that you purchase a book to guide you through them.

Organize an outing to a synagogue

I also recommend that you read some of Patricia Polacco’s books to your children, which I have reviewed on my picture storybook page.

Sonlight Hands on Activities
Science 1

Sonlight recommends that you make a weather graph to chart on Week 1. Here is one made already for you!

For your younger child who is tagging along this year - make a weather chart like I suggested on my gentle preschool activity page . Substitute the seasons with four weather blocks – rain, sun, wind and cloud. (Obviously in countries that get snow, a snow block would be appropriate!)

As you study the universe you can create a globe from paper mache for your children to paint.

Create a solar system model:
Using polystyrene balls of various sizes decorate them with the most effective colors. We used colored pipe cleaners to show the rings of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. We hung them up in a circular pattern on our schoolrooms ceiling “rotating” around the Sun.

You could also do a planet mobile in the same fashion but paint the balls with “Glow in the Dark” paint and hang it in your children’s bedrooms for night planet viewing.

Create a food pyramid when you study the body and food from cardboard and get the child to cut and paste foodstuffs from magazines into the correct section.

When looking at ”What’s Inside You?” you can create a "textured" internal organs body by doing the following:

1.Trace around your child on a large piece of cardboard ( an opened box works well). Together with your child: diagram where the brain, esophagus, lungs, stomach, intestines, heart etc are.

2.Find textured materials that suit these organs – piping for esophagus, sponges for lungs, balloon for stomach, a stuffed stocking for the large intestine, a long rope or ribbon for the small one.

3.Paste them on to the correct places.

4.Display your “organ person” for a great visual reminder of where everything fits.

Sonlight Hands on Activities
Science 2

When we were studying Dinosaurs, we came across a great educational toy called “Dig It Up!” which was a fake fossil placed into a soft cement type block. It came with 3 tools for our son to “excavate” the fossil. I am sure with a little looking around you could find something similar for a "ready made Sonlight hands on activity.

As the Science Activity book as well as The Book of Knowledge and The Usborne Living World Encyclopedia have a wealth of things to do, we were happy with those as our Sonlight hands on activities.

BUT as we do a nature walk each week in a forest or near a river or pond, our children were able to see so many animals and insects in their natural surroundings.

We were also given some tadpoles which have been nurtured by us all until they turned into frogs.

Make sure you take your children out into nature as often as possible. Take a look at my nature study book reviews and my nature study article to inspire you!

Medieval Studies

Introduction to World History Part 2

Plan a Medieval Banquet. Consider inviting another family. Make or hire authentic costumes for yourself and your children.

Plan the menu according to the lavishness of yesteryear. Involve your children in the preparation of the meal. You can consider buying A Medieval Feast by Aliki to work through with your children.

Get your children to decorate the “banquet hall” with streamers and make cardboard shields with an Authentic coat of Arms.

Your children can make swords with stiff card and tinfoil.

Dover coloring in books have a wonderful book for children who like to color in called Life in a Medieval Village . As the pictures have fine detail I would suggest these for the older learner

For other great hands on activities for this Sonlight theme consider purchasing Knights & Castles: 50 Hands-On Activities to Experience the Middle Ages

Our last favorite Sonlight hands on activity for the medieval era is to make a castle from boxes. Now that my children are a little older they tried this free downloadable castle template.