Important Things to Teach Your Kids in Homeschool

Guest post by
Aleksandre McMenamin

Homeschool guest post to assist parents with alternatives in education.Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child. 

Homeschooling your children can be an absolutely beautiful experience, both for you and for them. However, aside from the terrific times that you will have together, you also want to make sure that your children are growing up to become the most capable, well-rounded, and educated people that they can be. This puts a lot of pressure on you, the parent, when it comes to homeschooling. Take a deep breath and relax, though, because this is also something that will only get harder if you get too stressed about it. When it comes to homeschooling, just remember that there are some incredible tips out there to help you get the job done. Here’s some important things to teach your kids in homeschool.

Include lots of creative pursuits

It is really easy to get caught up in the classical elements of education and make your kid hit the straight-up academics really hard. After all, you want to make sure that they are getting the best education that they can so that they can compete with kids in public and private schools. However, this sort of approach to education hasn’t exactly been met with terrific results throughout history. Oftentimes, it turns education into tenuous memorization and does nothing to expand their minds.

Instead of that troubling route, include lots of learning about creative pursuits in your lessons. Education needs to be about balance, and understanding a wide variety of different subjects. Use art and music to make points and to build an appreciation for creativity. There are a variety of fun ways to do this, especially in the modern age. Video and photography are also a great way to incorporate technology and art into the same lesson plan. For some fun things to learn, here’s a nifty post about photography lingo.

Teach your kids how to schedule

When you are homeschooling your kids, there might be a tendency, or at least strong temptation, to get up and start your days later than you would if they were in a public school. However, this isn’t a good habit to start, early on. Be sure to still abide by a proper schedule when your kids are being homeschooled.

Not only will sticking to a schedule and getting up earlier teach your kids how to schedule, themselves, but it will also show them how much more can get done in a day if you learn balance and to give yourself the time and pacing to accomplish something. This will help them acclimate to the rest of the world later in their lives, as well as develop a sense of responsibility. However, it’s also important to not be too strict when it comes to creating a schedule. Such rigidness will likely not promote the sort of self-determinant thinking that you want to instill in your child.

Teach kids about current events

One important thing to remember when you are homeschooling your children is that you still must teach them to be apart of the world around them. A huge part of this is to learn about what is going on in the world, currently. These sorts of events won’t be found in a textbook (although the context with which to understand them might be). Many kids will get their information about what is happening in the world from conversing with teachers and fellow students. You have to find a way to fulfill this.

To teach your kids about the important things that are going on in the world, today, you need to know and understand these events, yourself. Take some time each day to read up on current events. Try to find a way that these current events can tie back into their lessons, if you can (obviously history is the best subject to do this, but not the only way). If you have some older kids being homeschooled, and would like to teach some economic principles, then one fun topic to talk about now might be to discuss how wages have started rising, and why that is. For more information, check out this informative blog post here.

Don’t underestimate the power of reading

Books are one of the greatest tools at your disposal when it comes to your children learning. This is because there is only so much you can directly teach them. At some point, they will need to be able to take in information themselves and process it thoughtfully. This is where reading books comes in handy. Not only does reading books help with learning about language, literature, and communication, but literally every subject that you can think of!

When your kids are younger, read a lot with them, whether they are homeschooled or not. This will give them an appreciation for books at a young age. This is an incredible thing that cannot be understated. As they get older, encourage reading books from a wide variety of cultures. Reading everything from contemporary American books to classic Russian literature will give your child a wide foundation of knowledge about other types of people and the world that we live in.

Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs