It may seem like a blast from the past! But paper dolls are a really useful thing to keep in your homeschool toolkit.

 

We used paper dolls for years throughout our homeschooling and found all kinds of uses for them.

They helped us to bring literature to life, explore history and culture – and they make a great way of exploring social studies too. Plus – cutting out the shapes is a great way to build up dexterity and hand-eye co-ordination.

Here are some ideas on how you could use them for homeschooling – and my favorite resources 🙂

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Not Just For Girls!

Lets just get this out of the way first! My son loved ‘acting out’ with the paper dolls as much as my daughter. He didn’t want to ‘dress’ them – but he loved interacting with them. Don’t leave the boys out. It is fun for them too.

Literature

It was all Shakespeare’s fault!

We were reading Lamb Shakespeare tales but the children were getting in a muddle over the characters. So I found some paper dolls and we started to use them to ‘act out’ the plays. The children dressed the characters and played out the scenes. It really helped to bring the play to life so we began to use them for other stories too.

I realized there were quite a few variations of paper dolls specifically aligned to different books. I didn’t always buy them – one set of paper dolls can act in several different roles! But the children seemed to enjoy it – and it made a very hands-on way of learning.

(Click on the images below to see  some examples)

History

Paper dolls were fantastic with history! We used them on our timelines and in our lapbooks. They are a great way to show the children how people dressed. And of course, to ‘act out’ your history books 🙂

Tip: Leave the book intact and photocopy the dolls onto sturdy paper. That way you get to re-use if you need to.

Geography

Well, maybe not quite geography. But paper dolls are a good way to bring culture to life. We pinned paper dolls on a huge world map.

Famous People

Studying about someone famous? Why not have a paper doll to go with it? There is a book for most famous people. We often used them as bookmarks! I found they were a very visual way of ‘seeing’ the famous person and not just hearing about them. They work really well for visual oriented children.

And more!

This is just a taste! There are paper dolls for fashion and movie stars and Disney princesses. I think you will find your children love them. Just to recap here are some of the ways you can use them:

• To act out stories or plays
• On your timeline or book of centuries
• In lapbooks or notebooking.
• In your unit studies or homeschool projects.
• To make a topic display board
• In an educational scrapbook.
• For discussion and play.
• As part of your Cabinet of Curiosities.
• For bookmarks and strewing.

 

If you have a recommendation or an idea I would love to hear it. Just leave me a comment or come visit my facebook page.