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Our bookshelves and bins are full of learning manipulatives that have a tendency to get lost in the shuffle. Thanks to an idea from Ami at Walking by the Way, we’ve found a fun way to add them into our school time and also fill those time gaps that inevitably happen in our homeschool day.
Meet our Learning Jar. Stuffed inside this jar there are bunches of colorful pieces of paper. Each of the colored slips has the name of a learning manipulative or activity written on it. Pssst…I’ll share a list below of some of our favorites!
On each of our kids Workbox Weekly Grid schedule, there is a small card for a ‘jar activity’. When there is a lull in their schoolwork or they need to wait for my help during the day, they open up the jar and pull our a slip of paper that is their color and work on that activity. Each color is for a different child – purple: Laurianna, yellow: McKenna, blue: Zachary, and green: Kaleb.
Once the activity is completed, the slip of paper is dropped into the finished jar. Certain children have been know to otherwise ‘stack’ the jar in their favor to get the same activity each day {ahem}.
The basket is stuffed to overflowing!
A few of the activities are stored in a bin on our school shelves and there are others located around the school room. Before writing activities and names of games on the paper slips, I went through the room shelf by shelf, drawer by drawer, and wrote down the names of everything in a notebook.
At one point I even got all crazy organized and had the activities divided out by categories, but that eventually was put aside. Then the paper slip writing began and the jar was filled to overflowing.
Ideas for Your Learning Jar
Here is a list of the learning games, puzzles, and other activities that we have listed in our Learning Jar for the kids to grab and do. Keep in mind, some of these may involve another child, so if someone isn’t available, the kids will grab another slip and save that one out to use as soon as they can!
Don’t forget to take a peek at Ami’s list of learning ideas – she has many that we don’t use! :)
Puzzles and Learning Manipulatives
- Addition, Subtraction, Division, and Multiplication Wrap-ups
- President fandex {read and learn}
- Civil War fandex {read and learn}
- Think Fun Visual Brain Storms
- Times Tales
- Tanagrams
- Geo boards
- World Puzzle
- Geo Puzzles
- Melissa & Doug Sea Life Puzzles
- Magneatos
- Guidecraft Fraction Action
- Wedgits
- Inchimals
- 3D Feel and Find
- Animal Train Sort and Match
- Flannel Boards
- Draw Write Now activity
- Sort and Match
- Koolaid Playdough
- Mad Libs
- Write Shop Story Cards
- Build a LEGO brick creation
- Magic Math boards {yard sale find}
Educational and Other Fun Games
- Hi Ho Cherry Oh!
- Candyland
- Connect Four
- Uno
- Pick and Draw
- Speed math game
- Set card game
- Pattern Play
- Chocolate Fix
- iPad game {educational}
- iPad game {for fun}
- Pyramath
- Bananagrams
Learning Printables and Ideas
- Have a few of these learning printables ready to go and add them to your list!
- Read! Build! Write! Vocabulary Printables
- CVC – Three Letter Word Cards
- Alphabet Do-a-Dot Printables
- Alphabet Playdough Mats
- Number Playdough Mats
- Do-a-Dot Printables
- Draw and Journal Pages
- Illustrating Bible Verses Printable
- Number Matching Cards
- Sign Language Alphabet Cards
- Spanish Color Matching Cards
- Vowel Beginning Sound Cards
- Three Letter Word Cards
- Consonant Beginning Sound Cards
- Uppercase Letter Tracing Cards
- Lowercase Letter Tracing Cards
- Number Tracing Cards
- Alphabet Coloring Pages
- Color Matching Cards
- Country Flag Cards
What are some activities and games that you would add to your Learning Jar? I’m always on the lookout for new things to add! Would you leave a comment with your suggestion?
The printables shared on this site are FREE of charge unless otherwise noted, and you are welcome to download them for your personal and/or classroom use only. However, free or purchased printables are NOT to be reproduced, hosted, sold, shared, or stored on any other website or electronic retrieval system (such as Scribd or Google docs). My printables are copyright protected and I appreciate your help in keeping them that way.
If you download and use some of my printables and then blog about them, please provide a link back to my blog and let me know - I'd love to see how you are using them! Please be sure to link to the blog post or web page and not directly to the file itself. Thank you!
What fun! I need to do this really bad! I would add sum swamp, magnetic pattern blocks, education cubes, chalk pastel lesson, craft projects, and math links.
Very fun! Great idea – I think my daughter would enjoy something like that!
Great idea!
This is so helpful! When I put my littles down for a nap there is always an inevitable lapse in things to do and this would be perfect to fill this time with. And likewise we have lots of bits that are not being used. Thank you, thank you!!
It never ceases to amaze me how many things there are lurking on the shelves that I forgot about! :)
Great idea! I will need to get this ready for this fall. Thanks for the idea. Our shelves are full of fun stuff, but don’t get used often enough. :)
Have fun sorting through your shelves – and discovering things you forgot! :)
A really good idea! We have tons of things that could go into each category of the jar. We also have a ‘new words’ jar’ that’s fun to do. Each time we learn a new word from a book, we put it in there and then draw a word out and try to make a sentence with it. It’s fun!
that is a great idea, Patricia! :)
Woo Hoo!!! The guilt is gone! I’m a curriculum junkie and I have so many “fun” things I’ve accumulated because “someday, we’ll use that,” or I always think I can squeeze it in, but never do. Now, I know we’ll put it all to good use. Now, to find a jar big enough to hold all those little slips of paper!!
Great idea!! Thanks! I will definitely be using this! ;)
What a great idea! Thank you so much for sharing! I might have to adapt something similar for our school time!
It has been a huge help to us (and me in remembering to do all those little things I easily forget!).
I love this idea! I’ve been collecting homeschool “stuff” for years to get ready to teach our now 5 year old, and I hadn’t figured out how to move that stuff from the shelf to being actively used.
It has helped us out a bunch! :)