Lets Pretend (soup) that we aren’t using our brain today
It being summer, kidlet is well aware that it is his vacation from academia. He has no tolerance for map worksheets or math problems or anything that he recognizes as “school stuff”. Still, I don’t want him to lose any skills from lack of use, and he really does need to work on his handwriting, as he was definitely in the bottom few in his kindergarten class for legibility. So, I have had to be more creative in coming up with ways to get his handwriting practice done, reinforce accumulated knowledge, and introduce new ideas as well. We write letters to out of town grandparents, play pirate and draw treasure maps to keep track of where we have hidden our booty, etc. I keep thinking I need to research “unschooling”, since I envision that method of homeschooling to be about always teaching without formal materials or structured time for academia.
He is still just learning about the 5 food groups so today I offered him one of our kid cookbooks (Pretend Soup, which is geared towards preschoolers and a little young for him, but I realized today that I really don’t have any good ones for the 6-8 range; I’ll have to rectify that!), and asked him to look through it and pick out a recipe he wanted to eat with at least one food from the fruit group and one from the dairy group that we could make together this weekend. (I pre-scanned and found several made with fruit and yogurt, milk, cheese or cottage cheese.)
Once he picked his recipe (Number Salad - cheese in a fruit salad. I think that sounds weird, but he thought it sounded divine), I asked him to make a shopping list so we could buy what we needed. As scraggly as this is, it is so much better than even a few months ago. We’ll just keep plugging along at it. Anyway
He worked at it a little while and handed it to me, “I’m done!” — only the first line was on the paper at that time. I said, “but I can’t read this, what does it say” and he informed me that it was secret code. Upon closer inspection I realized that his super sekrit code was devised using the first and last letters of each word. “Nice shorthand,” I offered, but explained that I might have a hard time figuring out what he meant when I went to the grocery with this list. I might think that he wanted me to buy OnE AwesomE BandanA and MeaN GrasS instead of an OrangeE, ApplE, BananA, MeloN and GrapeS. After pondering that he conceeded the point and re-wrote the list with actual words.
In addition to the various fruits, he also included two “must have” items for his snacking needs: “Pepowne” (pepperoni) and “Kota Ceese” (cottage cheese).
All in all, I was pretty happy with the effort. He did some reading and writing while we talked about the food groups and nutrition, and he didn’t even realize he was doing “school stuff” 
So, do any of you moms out there have ‘tricks” for educating your child with work disguised as fun?
Great effort
I wish I could say I cleverly disguise learning in fun thigns but I don’t bother telling Kidlet he’s not working because he just knows. So we simply have a summer routine that involves reading, playing his piano, and doing math or science daily in addition to fun summer stuff. He’s old enough to deal with it, because I’m mean 
hehe
That’s a really a good exercise! I must do this with my boy too!
Hmmm… now I have to go hunt for a book which has these food groups that my boy can understand and read.
I get my nearly 3 yr old kid to type words into the Youtube search bar so we can look for his favourite videos. I think it will help him to learn which letters go where. It’s also helping him to learn the alphabet and where the letters are on a computer keyboard. Some of the ones like Bob the Builder he can do (like B-O-B) and P-A-T for Postman Pat etc. He usually can do at least the first letter now of most of his favourites! (W for wiggles and M for Mario and Mickey Mouse!) Keep up the great work – I think it is a great idea letting them learn whilst having fun – that’s how learning should be!
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Ahaha ^^ This post made me laugh out loud (especially a Pepowne). Your kid’s very cute! Great blog and I love the kids learning ideas. Kind of hard to keep kids eating healthy when they get exposed to preschool+, isn’t it?
Makes you think that a school for the other parents with young kids would be a good idea, so your kids don’t see (and get tempted by) all the other junk they see other kids bring.