Homeschool Lesson Plans

We've put together some helpful tips to help you write homeschool lesson plans based on my experience as one of the very few second generation homeschooling families.

I've also picked out the best sites which offer free plans for you to use.

Tips For Making Lesson Plans

One

If there are two rules, they have to be: Simple and Short.

You don't want to spend so long writing up detailed lesson plans each evening only to find out you're too worn out to have any energy left to teach the next day!

As time goes on, you'll find you need to write less and less down to know exactly what you're doing.

Having alternative options allows for things which don't go quite as well as you'd hoped!

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Two

Varied activities work best.

Your child is going to get bored if the whole lesson is spent writing things down.

It's usually best to start your lesson plans doing something active.

Can you do an experiment, find things in the house, a quiz, look at a world globe?

Anything that gets your child motivated and moving will mean they'll be much happier to sit down for a bit later on.

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Three

Even as an adult, you'll find there's a basic rule for all homeschool lesson plans.

You learn and teach best if you keep your lesson short.

45 minutes is probably a maximum length for each lesson, even at high school.

You'll find you can do an awful lot in a short space of time and having frequent breaks will mean you all come back fresh and rejuvenated.

Homeschool Schedule

Drawing up lesson plans is part of the bigger picture - thinking up a homeschool planner.

You'll see that some homeschoolers adopt almost a classroom-at-home approach, but the majority enjoy making use of the greater flexibility that home school offers.

You can see how that works out with our tips on making a homeschool schedule.

You can make use of that flexibilty in your homeschool lesson plans too!

School plans assume a large number of pupils to one teacher and therefore include lots of ways to get the children quiet because the teacher has very little time to spare on any individual child.

Could be that when you're drawing up your home lesson plans you can move much quicker because you can get rid of any repetitive, tick-box type exercises and concentrate your energies on the areas your child is interested in/struggles with.

Advantages of Homeschool Lesson Plans

There are enormous advantages to writing your own lesson plans:

• You can do activities which would be impossible with a large group of children.
• You can focus on your children's interests and use them as a basis for your lesson plan. For example, if your child is interested in Space, you could cover a lot of homeschool kids math at the same time as building a space probe.
• Much of our teaching home school science has been covered by making use of free kids science experiments which naturally cover the curriculum.
  

Free Lesson Plans

It can be a big help following lesson plans which have already been prepared. We've drawn up a list of free homeschooling curriculum choices  which get top marks from homeschoolers.

But if you're looking for some really inventive lesson plans for all ages which cover everything from Isaac Newton to chocolate, have a look at Julie's free homeschooling lesson plans which make up her Smorgasbord curriculum.

And if you want some more tips for making your own, have a look at this video clip:

You'll probably find that the homeschool lesson plans that suit your family will change as time goes on and you'll become more and more confident about what works best for you.

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