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Many people are opting for (or being forced into) homeschooling in some form these days. Whether you have a kindergartener or a teenager, this can be challenging. Even if you're kiddo is attending online school, you might be struggling with ways to enrich their education, or just flat-out keep them motivated. Believe it or not, a pond can help!  TEACHING THE BASICS WITH A PONDA well-build ecosystem pond or water feature can be a terrific education-enhancing tool for teaching the basics: reading, writing & math. Reading next to a water feature can be a very pleasurable experience. The sound of a well-designed waterfall or babbling brook is relaxing, so if your child has reading anxiety, this could help calm that down. And there are tons of cool articles and blogs about ponds, or whatever actually interests them. Aside from the calming effect of a water feature to help ease anxieties about the drudgery of school assignments, writing a little story about one of the pond fish could be an excellent lesson in observation and/or creative writing. Math is not always a subject loved by all, so don't tell the little minx they're about to have a math lesson. Just ask them how they would calculate how much water is in the pond to do a water treatment. Little guys and gals might just want to count the fish. If you happen to have multiple kids, this is the perfect way to get them involved with each other.  POND AND THE ARTSMusic lessons by the pond? You betcha! Water has it's own music, so ask your little prodigy to find the beat and incorporate that into their playing. Allow them to be creative and think outside the box. Art is an obvious subject to teach by the pond: draw the pond; draw the fish; draw the plants; draw the birds that visit -- you get the idea. Or maybe grab a Monet book from the library and compare his art to how your pond looks. Recess is a great time for a rousing game of follow-the-leader!  NOT-SO-WEIRD SCIENCE BY THE PONDThis should be an easy one! Ecosystem ponds provide all kinds of cool science, anatomy, and biology lessons. If you have a microscope, there are even more possibilities!  THE NEW SCHOOL IS KINDA OLD-SCHOOLWe've gotten so regimented in our school-based learning processes that we forget that everything around us provides learning and teaching opportunities. A pond can be your most useful education enrichment tool, while also providing a calm atmosphere for lessons that might have caused your child learning anxieties in the past. Use your imagination and let your inner kid come out and play with your child -- you might be amazed at how that square peg that didn't fit into the school's round hole will blossom! Bonus: a magnificent sense of parental accomplishment for you. You've now earned that chocolate bar during nap time. ;-)  Feel free to comment below to share your own cool ideas and experiences! OTHER POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY: WATER FEATURES HAVE HEALING POWER KOI AND POND FISH ANATOMY KIDS AND PONDS: LET'S GO OUTSIDE Comments are closed.
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