Overview: Plan fun elementary lessons. Surprises, silliness, excitement and even a little bit of fright will engage their minds and help them remember them longer!
A fun way to motivate a student is to pack your lessons full of surprises and silliness. Positive emotions enhance learning and motivation. Kids will have strong and lasting memories if they are experiencing strong emotions while they are learning.
If you can make something fun, exciting, happy, loving, or perhaps even a bit frightening, students will learn more readily and the learning will last much longer. Emotions can be created by classroom attitudes, by doing something unexpected or outrageous, by praise, and by many other means. Surprises and silliness make lessons so much more memorable for children!
Fun elementary lessons could begin with you teaching the lesson in period costume, acting like a mad scientist when you are doing a science experiment, or having everyone sing their answers. Don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself to make a memorable point.
Try motivating your students with these 14 ways to use surprises and silliness in your lessons:
1 – Be Energetic
Being energetic in your teaching is a motivating factor in itself; adding energy to the ideas you want to convey will further enhance learning and commitment to the ideas.
2 – Catch!
Throw soft candy, like circus peanuts, into your students’ mouths if they get the answer right.
3 – Crafts
Let your kids have time to make a fun and unusual craft. This is good for their imagination as well as giving them a break from their traditional book work.
4 – Dancing
Jump up and start dancing during a lesson. Your boys will jump up and join you. It’s a great way to get the wiggles out as well as to get the blood pumping when the boys are acting lethargic.
5 – Enthusiasm
If you become bored or apathetic, students will too. Typically, a teacher’s enthusiasm comes from confidence, excitement about the content, and genuine pleasure in teaching. If you find yourself uninterested in the material, challenge yourself to devise the most exciting way to present the lesson.
6 – Humor
Allow your boys to express humor in appropriate ways and at appropriate times. Acknowledge your son’s skill at being humorous. Sometimes, you just have to have a sense of humor about a boy’s sense of humor. Don’t allow yourself to become annoyed at their antics. If you are in the right frame of mind they will brighten up your day.
→ Related Content: 13 Benefits of Unit Studies and How to Make Your Own7 – Mud
Let your sons put on bathing suits and roll around in a bunch of mud if they do their schoolwork well that day. And let them run through the sprinkler to get cleaned up again.
8 – Music
Sing their lessons to them. You can also accompany yourself on a musical instrument that you have at home – whether you know how to play the instrument or not. Have your boys join you in singing the lessons as well.
9 – Outside
Move their desks or table outside without them realizing you’ve done so and let them do their lessons outdoors for the day. This is a great spring or fall surprise!
10 – Pies
Let students throw a pie in your face if they get 100% on a test.
11 – Play Dead
Have a guest come in a play dead and let your sons solve a murder mystery. This will help to strengthen their reading and logic skills.
12 – Strange Voices
Use strange voices when you are teaching the lesson. Or, allow your boys to use silly voices when they give their answers.
13 – Stunts
This is a great way for Dad to get involved with homeschooling. Have him offer to have his head shaved or to run a marathon if they achieve a certain level of work.
14 – Visual Aids
Use silly pictures or cartoons to get across the point of the lesson.
For more ideas for unique ways to add fun to your homeschool lessons, head right over to my friend, Amy’s site – Rock Your Homeschool. She has about a bazillion ideas for ways to add surprises and silliness to your day!
Different approaches will motivate students differently. Use your imagination to continue to try new ideas out on your boys, until you discover which methods work best for them. Fun elementary lessons motivate students and help them to remember the information longer as well. Add surprises and silliness to your lessons and bring the fun back into your boys’ learning.
Question: What kind of fun elementary lessons have had great success with your child? Do you find that adding surprises and silliness helps your child to learn better? Please leave a comment below.
