Where Is Your Homeschool Classroom?
Thursday, June 8th, 2006By Mimi Rothschild
Although it’s important that your supplies and lesson plans be kept organized, your homeschool classroom may change occasionally depending on the current lesson. For example, if you have cable television or satellite service, you may decide to use the television part of the time for certain homeschool lessons. The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Biography Channel and Food Network are just some examples of using the television as a homeschool teaching aid. With today’s technology, you can record programming that would be pertinent for a particular lesson and show it any time.
If you teach Home Economics in your homeschool classroom, you may find yourself using the kitchen as your classroom. How meaningful would it be to teach a class on food preparation close to the dinner hour! After class is over, supper’s ready!
You may find yourself teaching a science class in your backyard. Whether you’re studying insects, plants, or vegetable gardening, your own backyard would make an excellent homeschool classroom.
You may spend the afternoon canvassing thrift shops looking for old clothes, hats and accessories for you and your students to dress up as your favorite historical figures. This could be an excellent way for the student to learn a famous speech. Any student would get a kick out of dressing up and delivering the speech his or herself. In this way, he or she might be more likely to remember it, and it would be great fun preparing for the lesson.
When it’s time to buy clothes, how about a shopping trip to a percentage off sale? For example, Susie gets the dress if she can tell you how much it will cost after the 20 percent off has been subtracted? This would be a fun way to teach what could be perceived as boring math skills. Perhaps James can have the shoes if he is able to tell you how much the tax will be. Taking your homeschool classroom to the store can be an excellent learning opportunity.
Of course, much of the time, homeschool will take place in a room in your home. If possible, use a large chalkboard or dry erase board to illustrate and write lessons. It’s important that the room and atmosphere be free from distractions. You certainly don’t have to mimic the traditional school classroom, yet it is best if the phone isn’t interrupting the lessons.
By incorporating different subjects and different ways of learning such as projects and field trips into your homeschool classroom, the time your children spend actually sitting down and reading and writing won’t seem as tedious as it might if that’s all they ever did. After all, we often learn best by doing.