10 Tips To Homeschool Your Kids

“I am not meant to be a teacher!”, read one friend’s post this morning. She has two elementary school-age kids and has been faced with teaching them at home.

We have all seen the laughable memes regarding schooling your kids at home but if you find yourself feeling the same frustration, may I give you some helpful advice?

I am a mom who has been there and done that, and I would do it again. I homeschooled my kids and they became lifelong learners.

Here are 10 ways to integrate learning, and homeschooling, into your kid’s day, without losing your mind.

10 Ideas to Integrate School into Every Day

The world is your oyster is how the saying goes.

But it is also a big, wide classroom. This was my motto and main motivation during my years as a homeschooling parent. It can also be your playground.

As a side note, any of these suggested tips can be altered to fit all ages and learning styles. Please use them as a starting point and let your creativity grow from there.

1.Think outside the box and outside! Get out into nature and discover things. If you have little ones, a fun activity can be to collect rocks, leaves, pine cones, or even shells depending on your area and count them when you get home. Many kids love to see how high they can count! And the added benefit to you is it keeps them busy for a few minutes. Maybe something they find will spark their curiosity to research it further when they get home. For example, where we live we have forests of evergreen trees. If your child is interested in trees they may like learning about the different species in your neighborhood, be it a deciduous maple or a Douglas fir. A quick online search together can bring up a vast amount of information on any given topic.

2. I found putting lessons into units extremely helpful. One of our favorites was the unit on Frogs. When my children were young, we had a creek on our property that came to life every spring with the chorus of frogs, making this study a wee bit easier. But, even in a metropolitan area, there is usually a green belt or two where frogs could live. The upside to teaching in a modular or unit fashion is you can apply it to any subject matter. For example; taking temperature readings or water samples can be categorized under Science, counting the population numbers falls under Math, reading and writing about life cycles or habitats can be English, draw and color pictures of frogs or bake frog-shaped cookies and call it Art.

3. Give kids time to be curious and to be, well, kids. Let them explore and play all the while using their imagination. Ask them to come back and write you a story of their day. You may find this helps them learn to reflect and self-analyze as well as build their writing and verbal skills. You can even proofread it for grammar and punctuation but I encourage you to do this together as “proofreading” like an editor would versus “correcting” it. Learning should be fun and enticing while avoiding punitive methods. A plus is your child will learn how to self-edit and may even see things you do not! Hearing stories from your child lets you into their world through their lens. A great takeaway for you. This became a treasured experience for us. Oh, the good ole days!

4.With everyone staying home the kitchen has become a place of gathering and learning. Who hasn’t baked some bread or cookies? Create a pre-meal time cooking class with your children. Kids love to sift flour, stir, measure, and lick the bowl! Everyone in the family can be involved and the best part is eating your creations! Maybe one of the kids likes to use their creativity to create a menu board or turn your home into the next hottest Bistro, seating you at a reserved table and taking your orders. Have fun with it and your kids will too! There are all kinds of cookbooks to get you started.

5. Much of our world is virtual now so why not take a virtual tour of a world-class museum to learn about art, anthropology, or dinosaurs. If you find an area of interest, say paintings by Monet, this can be a wonderful deep dive into further research. Spark your child’s curiosity. Read about Monet’s life, his early childhood, his home and gardens in Giverny, France, or his painting style. Perhaps unpack those paints from the cupboards and try your hand at creating a garden landscape on canvas. How-to videos are great for this. Along the way maybe you will even find a video or movie on Monet to immerse yourselves into. Truly the sky and your creativity is the limit! Here are a couple of links to get you started. Vitual tours here, and Monet’s garden here.

6. Let’s talk about music. Music can be part of your day too by cranking up the tunes and dance away the blues! This is a great exercise for the body and mind. There are many research studies suggesting music helps us focus and learn more efficiently. Sometimes even the break from other activities along with moving our bodies is much needed. But, if busting a move is not your jam, try enrolling in an online class for guitar, piano, or flute lessons. YouTube is a great resource and is generally free.

7. Read with your kids! Besides finding a Netflix series to binge, try finding a book series to enjoy together. As my children were growing up, we enjoyed the adventures of Harry Potter each evening in our living room. Books come in all forms now; paperback, hardback, tablet, and audio where you can listen to the author read their own writing. Truly a great activity for any age or reading level. Perhaps you can even take turns!

8. As the weather warms up another activity that serves multiple purposes is gardening together. It might be a hobby you love anyway or a task that needs doing, so why not get the kids involved? Starting plants from seeds and seeing them grow is always fun as well as a sense of accomplishment. Learn about the life cycle of plants, agriculture and farming, or foster a sense of sustainability and respect for the earth. Research various uses for plants in the garden. Are they edible? Medicinal? How do we use them

9. Good at math? Math can be a tricky subject for a lot of kids, and parents. I found mixing up the media we used really worked well and it made math fun! Use math games, catchy songs (again with music and memory), YouTube videos, or a favorite as my kids got older, Khan Academy. While they are engaged in a video, you can carve out time for your essential work helping to create a more equitable home/work/family balance.

10. Nature provides us a beautiful and wonderful cornucopia of learning. Try a nature walk, bird watching, or a native plant identification expedition. Even a picnic in your own backyard or local park can add to your school day experience. Sometimes the simple, quiet moments are just as essential! Lying on your back in the grass and looking up at the clouds can really help calm and focus a busy mind. A great activity for those with excess energy! To this day, my kids and I still enjoy finding shapes in the clouds!

I hope you have found these 10 tips for schooling your kids at home, helpful. They can be adapted for any age level. I think the key is having a conversation with your kids. What are they interested in? What do they struggle with? How do they feel they learn best (visual/audio/kinesthetic)?

Even though my two kids share the same DNA, they are not identical to each other or to me. This goes for learning too. They each organized and learned very differently, meaning mom (me) also learned to adapt.

So, treasure these days with your children and the time you have together, for it all goes by way too fast.

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MaryRose is a freelance writer living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. She is a traveler, licensed massage therapist, a lifelong vegetarian, and most importantly a mother. She enjoys the mash-up of these that life brings and writes about them with insight, humor, and wit.

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