Stardew For Realz Homeschooling Lesson Plan:  Year 1 Spring/June 2016  

Skill Highlights:

• Solution Creating
• Mathematics
• Science
• Applied Technology
• Research
• Reading & Writing

As a homeschooling parent, it often times takes ingenuity to spark your kid’s attention.  In setting upon this quest to be the main leader of my kid’s education, I’ve been looking upon lesson plans in a new light; from a different angle; a perspective outside of the box.  How do you apply mathematics, solution creating, computation and science all into one homeschooling project? Yep, my Geeky Moms friends, you’ve guessed it – by playing games like Star Dew Valley.  Now, taking this a step further, let’s step back into the real world and make our own farming adventure a real life lesson plan.

Which brings me to this new Geeky Moms’ series entitled “Stardew For Realz Homeschool Quests.”  Each week, I will post our updates on the types of activities and lesson plans built around Stardew Valley, real-world farming, computation, mathematics, solution creating, art, reading and science.  These lesson plans go beyond just one focused subject and incorporate an application towards the student’s learning.  For example, why would you ever want to know how to calculate the area of a rectangle?  Well, it certainly helps when you are buying dirt for your farming plots!

I’ve broken down these lesson plans into two different age categories.  I assign different positions on the farm based on expectations for learning modules.  For example, my 3rd grader is learning how to measure, research, and improve on reading and writing.  My 5th grader is more advanced in those areas and I apply her skills to biology and computing. Below is the outline of the lesson plans for both age groups:

Lesson Plan for 3rd Graders (Age 6 to 11) – Stardew For Realz – Harvest Day!

Focused Skills:

• Mathematics – Measuring, Weighing and calculating
• Adding, subtracting and multiplying decimals
• Online Research, Computational skills
• Physical Activity

The Harvest Day! Quest’s mission is to collect ripened fruit and vegetables from the garden,
weigh and calculate how much was collected, and find the average gross of the produce.  This quest includes the following steps:

1.  Physical labor – picking full grown fruit and vegetables from garden, hauling produce in a cart, discarding rotten produce, hauling portion of produce to chickens/ducks.
2. Once collected, each fruit and vegetable needs to be weighed on a scale.
3. Record findings of weight in Stardew For Realz diary.
4. Add the amount of weight to the grand total for the fruit/vegetable.
5. Research – go online and look up market prices per pound for fruit/vegetable.
6. Record findings in the Stardew For Realz diary.
7. Multiple the amount of pounds for fruit/vegetable and multiple by price per pound to get the average gross.
8. Record findings in the Stardew For Realz diary.
9. Quest Complete and their reward is delicious fruit/vegetables for dinner and a sense of accomplishment of helping on the farm!

Lesson plan for 5th Graders (Age 12 & Up) – Stardew For Realz – R&D Lab Statisticians!

For this quest, I assigned my 5th grader the task of being the R&D department on the farm, as well as the main statisticians.  The goal for her quest is to research the types of weeds growing in the garden and to create a spreadsheet to document the amount of produce grown over the quarter.  She was also to produce a chart in the spreadsheet to show the percentage of produce grown.

This quest includes the following steps:

1.  I sent her pictures of the weeds in the garden.  Doing online research, she is to discover the type of plant it is, and how to reduce it from growing in the garden.  In at least 250 words, she submitted a typed up document to me with her findings.  We use Google Docs and have a shared folder to store these documents.
2. Next, she created a spreadsheet in Google Docs which included columns and rows that mirrored the Stardew For Realz diary entries from the 3rd grader’s lesson plan.  She took the data that was discovered by the 3rd grader and entered it into the spreadsheet.
3. Lastily, she created a pie chart showing the percentage of produce grown on the farm.
4. Quest complete and the reward is yet another amazing dinner and snacks grown right on our own Stardew For Realz farm!

See the attached spreadsheet she created using Google Docs and feel free to be inspired for your own Stardew for Realz log!

If you don’t have a farm, this idea can be applied to multiple areas in your life.  All of these lesson plan ideas are offered to inspire you to think differently about the types of ways we can teach our kids to apply their knowledge.  You can instill this into whatever your own family enjoys doing and creating.  Have fun and enjoy seeing your children expand into the solution creators and innovators of today and tomorrow!

Next week, we dive into the world of chickens and ducks as I come up with some more fun and engaging Stardew For Realz lesson plans for our homeschoolers.