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Homeschool Lesson Plans Made Easy

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Written by Kayley Kenzie

Thursday, 20 March 2008

Homeschooling your child using theme-based learning is a fun way to teach and learn. You can involve your child as you brainstorm a them from virtually any topic your child shows an interest in.

by KayleyKenzie

Homeschooling your child using theme-based learning is a fun way to teach and learn. You can involve your child as you brainstorm a them from virtually any topic your child shows an interest in.

For younger children, you can choose themes like apples, birds, zoo, stars, or even a favorite author. When you choose theme-based learning, your homeschool lesson plans will be more creative, interesting, and fun.

When basing your homeschool lesson plans around a thematic unit, you will want to decide how much time you will need to cover that specific theme.

Depending on how deep you want your child to learn the content, you could spend a week to a month. I suggest only spending two weeks on one theme.

Integrating themes into homeschool lesson plans is not very difficult. You will also realize how much fun you and your child can have by basing all the learning around one theme.

You don't necessarily need to integrate every single subject into the thematic unit. You don't even need to do theme-based learning all of the time with your homeschool lesson plans.

Getting your child involved in the planning process is another important idea to keep in mind. Encourage your child to choose some lesson themes.

Giving children choices usually enhances interest in what you are trying to teach. I think it is important to have your child involved as much as possible in all areas of lesson plan preparation.

Let's look at an example to see how using themes in your homeschooling lesson plans would work. For example, if we were to do a thematic unit on apples, we could have a science lesson on how apples grow.

You could slice up an apple into sections to do fractions. You could make Johnny Appleseed the focus for a lesson in Social Studies. You could read books about apples or have your child write a paragraph about apples for Language Arts.

It gets even more fun: We can take those apple slices from the math lesson and transform them into stamps for the art lesson. We could sing songs that have apples in the lyrics. We could conclude it all with a cooking lesson, teaching your child how to make applesauce or apple bread.

The essential thing to remember when using theme-based homeschool lesson plans is to integrate some of your child's interests. Using thematic units as an addition to the curriculum that you have already planned can help make learning more enjoyable.

About the Author:

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