One way that we eased back into our school routine this year has been by using Box of I.D.E.As. These Ideally Dynamic Enrichment Activities are actually self-contained unit studies on a particular subject.
Box of I.D.E.As. are recommended for ages 9-16 and are available in several subjects:
- Pigs
- World War II
- WWII Pearl Harbor
- Eleven
- Salt
- Quilting
- Laundry
And more subjects are coming soon!
Each Box contains at least 10 different modules per study, is easily portable (think traveling, waiting rooms, etc.), provides 10+ portfolio pieces to record your student's progress through the box, additional suggestions and ideas for digging deeper into the subject, plus a SAT-style test is also included.
At our house we received the box on Salt in pdf form. It came with all of the files needed for ten different studies on salt:
- History of Salt
- Need for Salt
- Producing Salt
- Science of Salt
- The Salt of the Earth
- Very Salty
- Language of Salt
- Preserving with Salt
- The Salt March
- The Wall that Salt Built
Each file contains all of the printables needed for that study, plus lists for any additional materials needed.
Our favorite unit was The Language of Salt. We had so much fun learning about the meanings behind many idioms and phrases that I've heard most of my life, but didn't know the origin behind them. We printed off worksheets, informational sheets, and a very fun matching game where we matched phrases with their origins and names of places/cities with their meanings. I love it when education is so much fun!
Box of I.D.E.As. is a wonderful concept and I would love to explore more of their offerings. However, I do believe I would prefer to buy them in the physical box form. The pdf is good--and obviously less expensive--however, you use a lot of ink in the printing of the activities in each module. I think I would have loved having each module already packaged and prepared in a bag. It would have saved time in preparation, lots of money in ink and just been easier in general to use.
These fun boxes are available as physical boxes for $79, as a pdf download for $49, with extra student modules available for $4-$6 each. These would be great as unit studies, summer studies or simply as a change in your regular homeschool routine. I encourage you to check them out!
Some members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew also reviewed the WWII Pearl Harbor Box. I encourage you to head over to the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog to see what other homeschool parents have to say about Box of I.D.E.As.
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