5 Unique Topics You Can Add to Your Childs Homeschooling Curriculum
If you’ve decided to homeschool your children, you’ll have an adventure ahead of you. According to How to Homeschool, parents unfamiliar with curriculum creation often turn to prepared curricula such as All in One Curriculum (a complete digital curriculum covering required subjects) or AOP, for parents seeking a Christian-based curriculum. However, many parents find they can learn what they need online from homeschool websites and create a curriculum that meets state requirements. Here are some guidelines for forming your home school curriculum and adding subjects that address the interests and talents of your children.
1. How to Research Mandatory Requirements
Each state has requirements for subjects that must be included in a homeschool curriculum. You can find written information about which subjects must be included by contacting your state education department. Most states require the curriculum to include – at a minimum – language arts, math, science, and social studies. In addition to those basic requirements, you can also find out if an application for teaching your children at home must be filed with your local board of education.
2. Exceed the Boundaries of the Basic Requirements
There are concepts within the basic requirements of your child’s homeschool curriculum you may decide to follow closely. For example, if teaching language arts, you may agree that it is essential for your child to understand the functions of parts of speech and the principles of sentence construction suggested by the state’s guidelines. However, while helping your child explore language expressions, you may discover they are interested in using words in advertising strategies. To capitalize, you can show a video about advertising to demonstrate that consumers who watch an ad retain 95% of an ad’s message while mere readers retain only 10% of the same message.
3. Using Math in a Practical Way
Even though arithmetic will still be a crucial component of math lessons, you can help children make more sense of math by applying numbers to their daily lives or favorite activities. For example, middle school students can calculate bowling scores, while teens can learn how to balance a checkbook and save for a new car. According to Zippia, the total value of the US market for manufacturing automobiles in 2022 was over $100 billion. Learning statistics like that may help them put their desire for a car into perspective.
4. Take their Technology Skills to the Next Level
As part of your curriculum, you can devise projects to use skills from various subjects. For example, your child could use the Internet to search for a robot project and use math and technology skills to put the robot together. The same robot could then lead to a subsequent lesson about the projected future of the robotics industry. Specifically, according to projected statistics, the international growth of the robotic industry is expected to increase at a rate of over 17% – which could make it worth over USD 4 billion by 2028.
5. Take Time for Special Interests
Although you must teach the basics, use any extra moments to let your children express creativity by making a Mayan sundial at the pottery studio, studying Japanese to understand original anime cartoons, or learning the musical instrument of their choice. Check your local nature center for programs about local plants and animals, and don’t miss an opportunity to let your children dress up as characters from their books. As you and your children work through a lesson, you may find a specific part of it piques your child’s interest and create a lesson on that subject.
Once you begin your homeschool adventure, you may wish you’d started sooner. Many homeschool parents find they get ideas and socialize with their children by joining local homeschool groups. These groups may offer additional opportunities for homeschooled families, such as physical education and performance venues for students’ creative efforts.
