Effortless learning by passive reinforcement
Boy that title sounds technical, doesn’t it?
It really isn’t. It’s just an idea that a few homeschoolers shared with me a while back and I thought I’d share with you. It’s a wonderful take on a very educational object that we as parents have been using for years. You’ll find this object in our homes (well, usually). You’ll find this object in a Denny’s restaurant. You’ll find this object in bookstores, museums, even some wildlife preserves (if they’ve got a good gift shop).
What am I talking about?
Placemats.
What were you thinking, eh? 
Here’s the idea. Gather up some really nice educational placemats. You can find them at yardsales, in Scholastic Book Sales, in the gift shops of nearly any cool place you visit… you can even make your own using your inkject printer and some clear contact paper. You can also find them online; Physlink.com sells a number of interesting ones (two pictured above) for just $2.95 each.
The problem with placemats is that they get dirty, and cleaning them up means they leave the table and usually don’t go back for a few days. They also tend to grow legs and disappear. The ones that aren’t made very well could get wet on the edge, and suddenly the entire inside of the placemat is one big mess with ink bleeding over where it’s not supposed to be. Don’t worry, the cure is simple.
Go to Wal-mart, or the Dollar Tree, or some other store where you can find all kinds of weird gadgets you didn’t know you needed until you saw them, and buy yourself a nice vinyl see-through tablecloth. You know, the kind your weird aunt used to have covering her hideous flowered couch.
Place your placemats on the table, cover the entire table with the vinyl see-through tablecloth, and viola! Effortless learning by passive reinforcement. The placemats don’t get dirty, they don’t get messed up, and they don’t walk away.
Another great thing to use this for is educational posters of varying sizes, or even make a collage of unit-related images cut from magazines. Switch them out to match whatever you’re studying this week.
Interesting sidenote… where’s one place where you definitely won’t find our highly educational passive reinforcement placemat learning tool? Schools.
What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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