Homeschooling at Disney

[andrychowski]

We are going to Disney 12/2-12/9. We homeschool our kids (4, 7, 9, and 11). Wondering if anyone has any suggestions to make the trip educational. I would love to "count" some of the days for our school year. I know the kids will be learning (especially in EPCOT and Animal Kingdom) and just wonder what I could use for evidence for reporting purposes.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[MiniGirl]

This was just being discussed on the Homeschool Chat thread.

Check out these books. You'll notice they have them for the other parks as well.

http://vacationeducationbooks.net/epcot.aspx

ETA: I forgot to mention these are not secular books, so they may not be of interest to you. I haven't used them, so I don't know how easy it would be to leave that part out of it.

 

[Zookeeperof4]

I am also trying to make this trip "educational" but without losing the fun of disney. Wondering what ideas every one has

 

[amy_225]

One thing I heard was a good idea was to have your kids pick out a country in Epcot to do a report on when they got back home. Ask the CMs questions, research some of the history of the country, take pics for the report, etc. Sounded like a fun way to get the kids interested in the Epcot countries...

 

[sharonabe]

You will also have the storytellers in the World. So a report on the different customs of Christmas will work. I would have them write down just one or two things they learn from each storyteller and then put them all together with pictures when you get back home.

There is the Behind the Seeds tour at The Land in Epcot. It's not very expensive, and could easily be counted as a "field trip." The older ones could add a report if needed, but pictures with observations are enough in my book.

At AK, you can go back to conservation station. There are a lot of different options here that you should be able to easily put into a one page recap.

The biggest thing will be getting them to remember what they've seen and learned. Try to find some time each day for them to journal or just jot down some notes, so that when you get home they can enlarge upon those to do a "report."

Have fun!

 

[Stumpy]

Last year we took my 10 year old brother in law down for a week with us and in order to make the trip educational my wife made a notebook consisting of hundreds of questions he had to fill out regarding the parks. He had to observe things, ask questions of cast members, and do a little "research" to complete the answers. It kept him busy, interested in learning new things, and we were able to present his parents with a detailed notebook of his experiences while at the parks.

 

[PiperPizzaz]

Maybe post over in the homeschool chat thread. Also, post your state. I bet there is someone from your state that could help. I am in Indiana and we have to do nothing here except keep a written record of homeschool days.

Plus, since you homeschool you will be on auto-educate as I like to call it. You will have no problems finding lots of little bits around the world that are educational.

 

[C&G'sMama]

We don't home school but we pull our kids out during the school year for Disney trips at which point they are in "mommy" school. Last trip to Disney we downloaded color sheets of the flags for each country. The kids then looked up what the flags looked like to color them in and also the significance of the colors. They posted these into a notebook where they then wrote a little about each country that we visited while we were there. We also did a Kim Possible mission in China which could easily be turned into a lesson.

We talk about ocean life at The Living Seas. We talked about the environment at Living with the land. And that's just Epcot. You could do a report on American History through Film at DHS, Physics on all of the coasters through the parks. I realize it needs to fit into you IHIP but it also depends on your state (we were 2 weeks away from home schooling 2 years ago when DD got into a charter school that we are thrilled with, but we always keep HS on the back burner).

We leave in 3 1/2 weeks (the kids will be out school 8 days). We are going to cover more of the countries in EPCOT. And we also used our counter service credits one day to get a platter at 3 different countries to share among the 4 of us to try different foods. We did Germany, Japan and Morrocco (and France for dessert of course, but that goes without saying). This December we will try different countries. We are surprising the kids this trip and plan on them not knowing until we at least reach North Carolina (we drive from Western New Yorks and will stop in Charlotte for a night to visit family. So we will do the prep work and work the lessons from there.

Have fun!!

 

[Indiana Rose Lee]

what kind of ewpoerinf so you need to do? Hours or days?

LOL, that was "reporting" on the iphone, when I don't pay enough attention!! Sorry!

 

[disney_dreaming_mom]

Each park has so many interesting possibilities for assignments. Animal Kingdom seems like it would have many possibilities for science and ecology projects with all the animals and plant life there. Epcot, like some people have said could be filled with geography and history lessons. The Hall of Presidents is a great place. The children could watch the presentation and write an essay about all they have learned. Before the trip the children could read "The Adentures of Huckleberry Finn" or " Pirates of the Caribbean" and then experience the attractions. When they return home your could create an English/Literature journaling assignment centered around the stories. This would even be an appropriate time to teach budgeting for math class. There are so many variables and opportunities to learn. What fun!!!

 

[disneymeces]

I've made the last 3 Dworld trips educational...COProgress we discussed the history of technology, how so much has changed. Hall of Presidents (afterwards we discussed the civil war, and how it impacted us as a nation) There is so much it would be hard to type it all out, I even made q & a sheets for them to do at night before bed...fun questions of course and no more then 3. I also required my oldes dd to keep a daily journal (which she loved doing). Even now, my 2 oldest have their journals ready for the sept trip...LOL!

 

[lathamary]

We did the Behind the Seeds tour at EPCOT. It was very educational. We all learned a lot. Very, very, cool tour! I highly recommend it

 

[ginnymack]

Also, don't overlook the super simple things - journaling, map reading, figuring out transportation, "ordering" your day based on ideal times to do certain attractions, practice telling time by recording wait times, graph wait times, etc..

 

[DisneySJB]

You could go over to the Kennedy Space Center for a day.

 

[luckyfin]

There were recently articles written about this featured on the Passporter website. Just search school in the article search function and there are articles titled something like the world is your classroom and they focus on both the Magic Kingdom and Epcot.