This post is part of a series of helpful teaching tips for homeschoolers. If you haven’t yet, check out Tip #1, Tip #2, and Tip #3.
Of all the teaching tips in this series, this one has probably been the hardest one for me to put into practice.
Over the years I’ve gotten better, but I still tend to spill too many school beans. What are school beans, you might ask? Allow me to explain.
This post is part of a series of helpful teaching tips for homeschoolers. If you haven’t yet, check out Tip #1 and Tip #2. There may be affiliate links in this post – click here to learn more. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Imagine you walk into a classroom and take a seat at your desk. There you find a worksheet with a tree diagram. The teacher announces that you’ll be studying trees today. She lists the vocabulary words you should add to your diagram.
Now imagine instead that you walk into a classroom with a three foot wide slice of tree trunk on a table with a few magnifying glasses scattered next to it. The teacher invites you to study the tree for a few minutes and see what you see.
I’m guessing I’m not the only one who would find the second scenario more interesting.
This post is part of a series of helpful teaching tips for homeschoolers. Check out the first post here.
If you look up “how to create a lesson plan,” the first thing that most resources will tell you is to “Know Your Objective.” That is, know what the main point of the lesson is. For example, “after this lesson, the student will be able to name the four largest moons of Jupiter.”
When I started homeschooling, one of the first things I did was to check out a stack of “how-to-teach” books from the library. I was hoping to find the secrets to successful homeschool teaching.
I found about 30% of the information to be really helpful. The other 70% was geared toward navigating the public school system. They covered things like managing classes of 20+ students, working with parents and school administration, and decorating classroom bulletin boards.
Don’t get me wrong. A lot of it was good information. But it just wasn’t relevant for me as a new homeschool mom.
This past summer, I was looking for ways to keep the kids involved in something productive but not too formal (that is, no 24/7 Minecraft allowed… but nothing that would require too much work on my part, either).
Among other things, my plan included intentionally setting out interesting activities for my kids to find and explore if they wanted to (aka “strewing”). If you haven’t yet, check out the prequel post – Our Homeschool Summer Break – Year 5 – for a little more context and my original summer plan. In that post, I promised you an update on how it went and here it is!
I can’t believe it’s August again!
That means it’s time to share our homeschool plans for the year ahead. (If you’re curious about what we’ve used in the past, check out this post which has links to all the previous years.)
We’re really in the thick of it now. I’ll be homeschooling my fifth and second grade boys and their three year old sister (whose unreliable, dwindling naps should make for a crazy-making an interesting year).
Has the word “homeschool” caught your attention lately?
Are you curious about it? Feeling called to it? Wondering if it’s something you should explore more?
Do you feel a little crazy for even considering such a counter-cultural concept?
That’s exactly where I was not too long ago.
I’ve never met anyone who loves every single part of their job.
When I used to work in architectural engineering, the two things I dreaded most were boring business meetings and plumbing diagrams. And if I had to attend a boring business meeting ABOUT plumbing diagrams… well, let’s just say that wasn’t my favorite day. There’s only so long a girl (at least THIS girl) can listen to someone explain the intricacies of sanitary vent lines before she’s forced to mentally escape to Aruba to preserve her mental health.
It’s no different with home education. Not the part about the plumbing and meetings (unless you mean pulling LEGOs out of the toilet and calling a family meeting to determine the culprit).
No. What I mean is, just like every other job, the role of home educator has its downsides.
If you homeschool or are considering it, there’s one question that’s critical you answer.
It’s NOT “What curriculum should we use for math?”
It’s NOT “How will we make friends?”
And it’s definitely NOT “How can I recreate public school at home?”
The super-dee-duper, most-important, must-answer question is…
(drum roll, please)
Is it just me or has our society overcomplicated things that should be fairly straightforward?
Take food, for example. The overall process seems like it should be pretty simple. Grow or buy food. Cook food. Eat food. Done.
But when you get to the grocery store and spend the first 15 minutes just trying to pick a breakfast cereal from the 129 choices available, you quickly realize this might be harder than you thought.
