|

Top Ten Ways to Review

Home Science Tools Banner
* This post may contain affiliate links or sponsored content. *

Did you like this article? If so, please help by sharing it!

It doesn’t matter if you homeschool or your kids are in public or private school, you’ve got to review what you’ve learned if it’s going to stick.  Nobody ever said, though, that review had to be boring.

Top Ten Ways to Review

Here are some of our favorite ways to study stuff:

1. Roll a giant die.  There are lots of different ways to review with a giant game die. You can use computer paper or cardstock to create a life-size game board or just use a set of review cards labeled with numbers – roll a two, select a review card from stack #2; roll a five, select a review card from stack #5.  Don’t forget the fun rolls – like double points or roll again for rolling a six.

2. Review cards.  Review history and science as you go by keeping review cards on a ring  and pulling them out for daily or weekly review.

3. Play bingo.  Bingo has always been one of our favorite all-purpose games and it’s great for review.  Just put the answers on the bingo squares and use the review questions as the call cards.

4. Adapt paper bag book report.  Rather than use the paper bag book report bag to hold items representing key facts about a book, use it to hold items representing science or history (or whatever) facts. If your child can tell you why the items are significant, he probably understands the material.

5. Do a presentation for the family.  Let your kids prepare a presentation or speech for their family. They can even include a few hands-on learning projects if they’d like. In addition to reviewing the facts while preparing for and giving the presentation, your students will also get some public speaking practice.

Top Ten Ways to Review

6. Make a bookmark. When Brianna was doing Apologia biology, she used vocabulary bookmarks that we printed from DonnaYoung.org, where we found bookmarks for each module. She would read over each day as she did that day’s lesson. It was a pretty quick and easy review (most of the time – some modules have a lot of vocabulary). This easy study idea could be use for almost any subject, even if you just stick the bookmark on a bulletin board.

7. Play Memory. We always loved learning with games whenever we could. Memory (a.k.a. “matching”) is a great study tool for just about any subject. Put the question on one card, the answer on another. Each question/answer match makes a pair.

8. Play Jeopardy.  This one really only works with at least two players, so you might have to drag in the non-teaching parent in a pinch (which can be fun because maybe, since it’s probably been awhile since he’s studied the facts, he’s not smarter than your first-, fifth-, or whatever grader). Let your players choose from subject related categories.

9. Adapt Scripture Memory Box.  We love Simply Charlotte Mason‘s Scripture Memory System for learning Scripture, but the same premise could work grade for cumulative review throughout the school year. Just study some facts daily, moving them to weekly and monthly slots as they’re memorized.

10.  Adapt a board game. This is another one we used a lot when the kids were little. Just about any board game will work. You can play a few different ways. Roll to see how many questions each child has to answer and move a space for each correct answer, roll to see how many spaces you move if you get one answer correct, or, for games where players take turns making a move, like checkers or Connect Four, the player has to get a correct answer before he can take his turn.

These are just some of the ways we’ve found to make studying more fun.  What are some of your favorite fun ways to study, memorize, or review facts?

updated from an article originally published August 17, 2010

+ posts

Did you like this article? If so, please help by sharing it!

10 Comments

  1. These are great review tips. I used some of these when I taught elementary school. Sounds like you keep learning fun at your house.

  2. Those are all such great ideas! We haven't tried all of those but we have used some. I love the Scripture Memory System but hadn't thought about using that method for other subjects. Great idea! Thanks!

  3. Great ideas! I was just thinking about doing a post on my Impress Your Kids blog about how to memorize scripture with kids. All these would be perfect for that, too. In fact, when I was a Children's Pastor that huge dice was one of our faves!

  4. I wanted to ask you about The Bible study Guide for all ages that you have listed on curriculum week. Can you explain more? I 've been looking at it and we need something! We have 6 children ages 5 to 15.
    Thanks!
    Lesa

Leave a Reply to Tristan Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.