Home School: Teaching Materials or Organizing Your Stuff
There are many advantages to deciding to home school your child. First of all, it allows you to address their performance one on one. You can help to strengthen their weaknesses. You can help instill a sense of pride in them on their accomplishments. As the educator in your child’s life, you can customize the amount of time and effort that is spent on any particular subject and personalize your teaching methods to suit the needs of the child.
Sometimes, it is quite difficult to know just where to start. A parent understands that while, yes, you can allow your student to experiment in academic areas that other kids their age are experimenting with in formal institutions, this can be child led rather than imposed by an arbitrary opinion of what is best for your child. Whether it is sports, art, or a career path, many times these “explorations into other areas” bring stuff into your home.
One place to start in having a successful home school curriculum is being able to lay out a suitable schedule. The next step is being able to adhere to that schedule or modify it to suit your needs. Some parents use various software programs, such as Microsoft Office, to schedule their time. Other parents use a simple process of pen and paper. There are some that plan ahead, plan as they go and implement activities as the they see fit. The choice lies with the parent and where their comfort zone is. What do you do with your schedule or software?
Gathering materials to suit your home school program may prove to be overwhelming if you are not sure which direction to take or if your child is in too many activities at once. However, if you have an idea of where to start, it is a relatively easy process. Once you gather all the necessary materials and supplies, you can outline and organize the products according to the curriculum and activities you will be using.
1. One thing you can do is to separate the products that you have gathered for yourself and the products for your child. You can do this by using storage containers, shelves, drawers or whatever means you have.
2. Separate the materials and supplies for the whole year. You can separate them by topic, month, subject and various other ways. Once again, it is whatever you feel is a comfortable fit for you and your space.
3. One important aspect of organizing materials and supplies that the child will use is making sure that the items are accessible to your student. This can get a little tricky when you want scissors and glue available for your second grader, but want them away from your 3 year old.
4. You can also separate items further by placing things that are most often used together and things that are not used a lot together.
5. Take stock of your inventory. You can do this by a quick glance at what is needed for a lesson or you could put more work into it. You can make a simple spreadsheet using an excel document. Write down all the supplies that you will need for the entire year and then make another section stating how much of each one you need to have. Make a column that shows when you need to purchase something and keep track of the inventory. This is a much easier and more efficient process to follow than to wait until you are in the middle of a lesson to learn that you are missing something you need to complete it.
6. After you have gathered everything you need, familiarize yourself with each component.
Keep in mind that a lot of wonderful and often, free, materials can be found online to supplement your home school curriculum. Also keep in mind that you’ll have to organize the free stuff, too.