Some of the best homeschooling projects that can be adjusted to suit the levels of 3rd to 5th grade students (8-10-year-olds) include building a greenhouse, creating a play or a musical, making a water slide, doing a study on a chosen country, making a stop motion animation movie, and doing coding on a LEGO® Maze. These projects can be completed for more than one day depending on the preferred complexity and required iterations.

1. Building a Green House

•  Building a green house can be done as a homeschooling project that will require the students to plan, build, apply scientific principles, and build their project management skills.
• This project can also help them learn the principles of the engineering design process, the scientific method, budgeting, graphing, and other lessons.
• They will also learn photosynthesis, material properties, and other concepts.
• The project is typically designed for 3rd graders. It can be done for more than one day as the students wait for the seedlings to sprout.
• The following materials can be used to build a simple greenhouse for kids:
  •  Frame and cover: straws, popsicle sticks, Ziploc bags, and saran wrap.
  •  Body: empty milk cartons, glass jars, and a small plastic flower pot.
  •  Documentation: paper, budget sheet, data sheet, colored cards, and research sheet.
  •  Others: soil, seeds such as lima beans or grass, scissors, tape, and rulers.

• Students can work with each other to build the greenhouse.  
• To practice their project management skills, students can be given their roles by handing out color-coded cards that represent typical project roles.
• The green card will be given to the facilitators who will oversee the project, makes the final decision, and act as the link to the teacher for any help needed.
• The pink card will be given to the banker who will manage the budget of the project.
• The orange card will be given to the recorder who will document the process, the materials needed, changes, made, tasks completed, and other notable items.
• The yellow card will be given to the buyer who is tasked to obtain all the materials. The buyer and the banker will be the ones to “buy” the items from the teacher.
• They will all be given a budget sheet, a planning sheet, and blank papers to record their various tasks and activities.
• The teacher can then teach the students the concepts that they will be learning in the project.
• The students will also be given some time to define the objectives of the project, plan, brainstorm, design, collaborate, and build the greenhouse.
• They will also need to test if the greenhouse is working and track the important metrics of the greenhouse such as the growth of the plants, temperature, and others.
• They can also work on testing the design and re-building as necessary.
• Teachers can ask guide questions throughout the exercise to help the students in understanding the various concepts and how they were able to apply them to their project.

2. Creating a Play or Musical

•  Role-playing projects can be accomplished by children from ages 6 to 10.
•  Producing a play can help children learn how to collaborate with each other.
• Some of the lessons that kids can learn from producing their own plays include literature, music, collaboration, acting, sound production, and time management.
•  Executing the play from ideation to actual performance involves many steps that can take more than one day.
• Children can work with each other to re-enact their favorite stories.
• They can also opt to create their own story lines.  
• The tasks involved in completing a play can be distributed to each of the kids involved depending on their interests and capabilities.  
• Some kids may not be keen to act on stage so they can be tasked to build some of the props or help with backstage tasks.
• Some can also contribute to building the story lines and dialogues while others who are interested in music can handle the
• One kid can also be assigned to direct the play and oversee the preparation and practice involved before the actual performance.

3. Design Challenge: Making a Water Slide

• Fourth-graders can take on the challenge of building a miniature water slide to improve their creativity.
• The water slide creation is simple but the testing and adjustment part can involve many iterations that can take more than one day.
• Children can learn design thinking, engineering principles, and physics concepts when building the slide.
• The materials needed for the water slide include paper cups, paper tubes, paper straws, plastic wrap, Tupperware, or container that can contain a “pool” at the bottom of the slide, glue, tape, small toys, pen and paper for taking down notes, and other upcycled items.
• This project is highly flexible as there are various ways that the student can complete the task.
• The main objective of this project is to let the student’s imagination run free in determining how to combine together the materials to meet the specific goal of creating a water slide.
• The child can be given some guidance by the educator to help them determine how to best utilize the available materials. However, the final decision on how to combine the materials can be made by the student.
• The students can first make a design of the water slide to have an idea of the final outcome.  
• They can then focus on the various elements of the slide to brainstorm on how to best use the available materials.  
• The students can then work on building the actual water slide based on the initial design.
• The slide will also need a supporting structure that the child can build around the slide.
• They can take into account some physics principles to conceptualize and build the structure.
• Once the water slide is finished, the students can test the slide using available toys.  
• If there are problems found with the initial design of the slide, the students can work on the design iterations to work on the problem.
• They can brainstorm and make several modified prototypes as needed until they can produce a perfectly working water slide.

4. Country Study

• Children of all ages can engage in an in-depth and immersive country study activity.
• Based on the need for more information on a country, the activity can be made to last for several days.
• Through this activity, they can learn about world history, art, literature, and music.
• The kids can choose a country and undertake in-depth research on it.
• They can read books about the country to know about its people and culture.
• The kids can also look for art or craft ideas from the country.
• They can also do their research on the food trends and recipes from the area. Based on what they found, the kids can re-create some of the crafts found. They can also opt to cook dishes based on the recipes found.

5. Stop Motion Animation Project

•  Stop motion animation is one of the methods employed in making movies where inanimate things were made to look as if they are moving on their own.
• This customizable activity can be adjusted to suit kids of various ages.  
• The project incorporates science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics concepts (STEAM).
• The exercise can also bring out the creativity of the child and can teach them the mechanics of movie-making.
• The project can be modified to last for more than a day by adding more scenes or making the movements more complex.
• The materials needed will depend on the movie scenes that will be conceptualized by the student.  
• The materials needed include foam core, several objects to animate, smartphones or tablets with cameras, and a tripod. For the platform, a stop motion animation app can be used.
• Students can then build a backdrop using the foam cores. They can then place the inanimate items in front of their camera and take a photo. The tablet, smartphone, or camera should be securely perched on the tripod for better picture quality.
• They will then place the object in another position to take another photo.
• This process can then be repeated for an average of twenty to ten thousand times to obtain several pictures.
• The series of pictures can then be played back in a rapid progression using a stop motion animation app to make it appear that the objects are moving.

6. LEGO® Maze Coding

• This activity can be adjusted to suit kids from pre-school and above.
• Through this activity, the students can know more about the principles of coding, sequencing, and looping.
• Depending on the complexity of the maze, the preferred iterations, and the skill of the students, this project can take more than one day.
• The LEGO® Maze Coding package comes with printable materials such as instruction cards and multiple maze designs.
• When doing the coding, students can visualize themselves as the person in the maze.
• They can then build the needed codes based on the printed instructions to help the character in the maze navigate through it.