Learning Through Play, Growing Every Day

There are many ways to look at the breaks in the school year.

Excitement: the family gets a disruption in the normal routine and can spend quality time doing the “unexpected.” 

Trepidation: maybe your schedule is fairly consistent year round, so the kids having breaks causes you anxiety about what you will do with them while you are otherwise occupied.

Knowledge Scramble: do you worry that breaks may cause your child to forget some of what they have worked hard this year to learn?

Breaks may cause you to scramble looking for ways to help them retain their learning.

This article is just for you, regardless of where you fall on the “how do I feel about the upcoming break” or which break it is.

What is a Problem Solving Workshop?

The way I see it, these are almost like escape rooms.

There are a obstacles, often presented according to a theme or storyline, that take some time and are fun to do.

What are the benefits of a Problem Solving Workshop?

There are many benefits to using problem solving teaching methods in your homeschool classroom. 

Among these, Problem Solving Workshops benefit your child by: 

• Strengthening academic skills
• Enhance critical thinking abilities
• Foster creativity and innovation
• Improve decision making skills 
• Boost self confidence and independence

How do I use a Problem Solving Workshop?

There are many ways to use one in your homeschool classroom.

In the end, the benefits of simply having a workshop, that does not necessarily relate to any curriculum or have a background story are still so plentiful, that you do not need to put forth the extra effort to integrate the workshop into your curriculum.

However, if you do, remember that when children learn through play, they engage more deeply, enjoy their learning more, and retain the information better.

Ways you can use a Problem Solving Workshop

1. Reward: I talked about story hunts as a reward for reluctant readers.
   These workshops could work the same way.
   I think that kiddos will enjoy these so much that if you promise to create one every winter and end of year break if they promise you to (what is your biggest struggle), you will have a deal!                                       
   It will not matter if you create a Problem Solving Workshop that is related to what they have learned, your children will just want to “play” in the space you created.
   
   
2. Reinforcement: I love these workshops to reinforce material learned.
   They can be a culmination to the school year or the very first thing you do in August to get your children “fired up” again for learning.
   You can also have a workshop as soon as you get back from Winter Break. 
   If you get really good at preparing these, you could do “mini” workshops every time you finish a huge unit.
   
   
3. Introduction to the new: I like getting children excited about what I am about to teach them.
   If you are heading into a science unit about rocks, (this is one of the least exciting things I could think of), how can you do a Problem Solving Workshop to cause your children to feel curiosity, want to experience the rocks, and ask more questions?
   This is a perfect usage of one of these workshops.
   
   
4. Unrelated: do you ever have a topic you want to talk with your children about, that is simply unrelated to your curriculum?
   In the examples, I am going to give you, under discussion, the topic of elderly driving age limits/tests.
   This could be a great problem solving workshop with discussion, mathematical equations for speed, round abouts, etc to see if there are safer ways to allow more people on the road longer, and city planning or graphing exercises.

How do I prepare for a Problem Solving Workshop?

I am not going to lie.

Preparing your own Problem Solving Workshop can be a lot of work.

There are ways to make it easier, we will get into that under “tips.”

However, any time you make a concerted effort to give your children real world challenges that are engaging set in a theme or story all under the guise of fun and games, it takes creativity and effort.

The rewards are well worth the effort.1. What are your goals and expectations?

It is much easier to start planning your workshop if you know what you want your children to accomplish with it.

A workshop that is focused on reviewing a unit will look much different than one that is a reward at the end of the school year and simply “fun” while they reap the benefits of the problem solving workshop.

2. Are there particular themes or topics I want to focus on with this workshop?

You could use the problem solving workshop to introduce the next major unit study.

Let’s use Egypt, for example.

You could develop an entire backstory about an archaeologist in Egypt.

As one of the puzzles, you could have a word search that has many of the important concepts that the student will need to learn and understand in the upcoming studies.

An example is silt. While many students do not readily know about it, this is crucial to understanding the success of agriculture and the flooding of the Nile.

Your goal is to create opportunities that stimulate your child’s curiosity, encourage creative thinking, and leave them wanting more!

3. How much time do I want the workshop to take?

An escape room takes one hour.

I like the idea of a workshop taking four hours, two in the late morning, lunch and down time, and then two in the afternoon.

This makes it an event.

You will want to know how long you want it to take and the day.

4. How many people will be participation and how?

One of the benefits of these workshops is collaboration with others.

You need to have other children there to work with your child.

This will, oddly enough, not make more work, but much less, see tips!

You can also make a Problem Solving Workshop virtual.

I am not a fan, because I like human interaction and kids thrive on being with other kids.

However, you can have, as an example, the morning portion be the hands on activities and puzzles, then have everyone break for a barbecue lunch.

Play together for an hour after lunch and then head home.

Once everyone is resettled, teach the kids how to get onto an online room.

This is a valuable lifeskill.

Many people are using Zoom or Google Hangouts for meetings, it is very beneficial that your child knows how to do this.

Then have the “discussion” portion of the problem solving workshop take place virtually.

How do I design an engaging Problem Solving Workshop? 

Great question!

You know what you want to do, now you want to know how!

Your goal is to craft challenges that will fire up those critical thinking skills, while allowing your child to be creative in their learning and decision making process.

1. Open-ended: encourage your kids to think creatively by presenting open-ended problems that require them to come up with innovative solutions.
2. Real-world: Incorporate real-world scenarios that connects the challenges to current events or real life making them more relatable and interesting.
3. Mix it up: Use different formats of challenges and puzzles to keep it all exciting. Include hands-on, puzzle solving activities, and discussion type of challenges.
4. Age appropriate: tailor the workshop for a specific age group. The key to an engaging Problem Solving Workshop is it will challenge, but not frustrate. This means you would use different puzzles, techniques, and story lines or themes for 5 year olds as your would for 10 year olds.

Tips for creating a Problem Solving Workshop with greater ease

1. Get help. One of the key factors of these workshops is collaborative activities. Talk with other homeschooling moms and see if any of them would be interested in creating this with your for their kids. If you are in a co-op, this is even better!

Just another reason why I LOVE homeschool co-ops!

The other mom or moms and you can come up with challenges, puzzles, discussion point, and theme or storyline together and your children can do the workshop together.

WIN, WIN!

2. Don’t assume. It is so easy to assume that because we know it and because we were never officially taught it, it is just known. How to be a member of a collaborative team is not the same as being on a sports team, or a family member. Don’t assume your child already knows how to be a great listener, is able to communicate their thoughts so they are heard appropriately, can compromise, and can listen to differing ideas about a topic. Teach it.

3. Theme. There are a ton of puzzle ideas out there. For me, it is much easier to start with a theme. This at least narrows down what I should be looking for. Imagine searching for “clothing” on Amazon. Men’s? Women’s? Pants? Shirts? Winter? Summer? The list goes on and on!

Don’t forget, these are supposed to be fun. Your child should be begging you to create another one.

So, even though you want them to learn specific topics (and believe me they will be learning just in doing the challenges and thinking creatively and outside of the box), they are begging you to learn more.

Can you give me any example to use in a Problem Solving Workshop?

I am going to ask for grace, as I am on vacation, as you will see with one of my examples, and am coming up with these “off the cuff.”

To incorporate “real world” some of these are very relevant to my area, but may not be to yours.

Also remember some of these are much more appropriate for older children.

Discussion topics: the goal is encourage your children to see multiple ways to resolve an issue.
This helps them to learn empathy and build listening and conflict resolution skills.
Under no circumstance would I choose a topic that is weighed down by political drama or anything that will cause fear or concern.

• After a specific age, the elderly should be required to pass a yearly driver’s exam.         
  People in our town have tried to get this on the ballot off and on over the last 30 years.  
  We have a very large elderly population.
  We do have a large number of accidents that involve elderly drivers.
  However, we live in a town that is very spread out geographically (I live 15 minutes from a grocery story by car) and we have no public transportation.
  
  
• Recycling, when does it matter or is more beneficial than not?
  We live in Arizona where, at times in the year, we have actually run out of water.
  It takes a long time to wash peanut butter off of the containers before recycling.
  And is the recycling really going anywhere and being turned into anything?
  When is it an absolute must to recycle and when is it more harmful to the environment to do so?
  
  
• Should people be allowed to decide about themselves?
  I was just in Mexico. Many people rode in the back of pickup trucks trucks.
  We used to do this when I was little.
  Motorcyclists used to be able to not wear helmets.
  We used to not have to wear seatbelts.
  Whether or not these are good or bad decisions, should we have laws about them?
  If they are to protect us and keep us safe and healthy…should we also not be allowed to eat fatty foods? (Could be another discussion point).

Storylines: we all love a good story! When you create a story that “holds” your problems and challenges together, it all just kind of makes sense!

A fish is swimming and comes upon a gallon sized ziplock bag.
This is the story you will make up, depending on where you want to take it.
Here are some example activities that can go with it:

• Mathematical equation: how to determine how long it will take that bag to wash into shore.
• OR mathematical equation: how long will it take for that bag to decompose in water? Land?
• Problem solving: what are other things that vacationers could have re-used a gallon sized ziplock bag for?
• Craft: DIY craft idea
• Science ideas
• Discussion point about the viability of sea life and humans coming together.
• We experienced the after effects of Hurricane Sara while we were on vacation.
  A hurricane, tornado, or earthquake would make a great story line in the background as there are many science, math, and discussion points you can have around these.
• A circus. There is so much going on at a circus that you can easily incorporate all kinds of fun puzzles, engaging games, and challenging math or science dilemmas under the guise of the big top!

Units: I love the idea of using Problem Solving Workshops to introduce or review units of study.
The actual unit would be the center focus.

• Rome: you can have a story about Rome or even taking place amongst the Roman Gods (Romulus and Remus could be having a sibling rivalry!). You would want to include things like the aqueducts and Roman numerals.
• Geography: depending on what you are studying, geography is pretty big, you can focus each puzzle on each region.
  You could even have the floor or ceiling be a map-and see if the kids notice!
• Geometry: assuming the child is young and is being first introduced to Geometry, you can have many puzzles that use tangrams?
  Also have a lot of manipulatives of shapes that the child is required to place in specific sequences.
  You can also create challenges with angles, like you can only see something that is crucial to finding the next clue when the telescope is held at a specific angle.

Hosting a problem-solving workshop for your kids can be a rewarding experience that fosters critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and teamwork. When you incorporate real-world scenarios, open-ended challenges, and a variety of puzzle and game types, your children will be begging you so that they can learn more!

Movie Quote:
The human brain is an amazing thing.
~ Matilda