Even when you’re taking a break from homeschooling there are simple ways to incorporate learning into your every day life. Often times when kids graduate there are many things that they don’t know how to do because parents forget to teach their kids things outside of schoolwork. As homeschool parents we have the opportunity to use life skills to not only teach our children how to take care of themselves as adults, but we can make it an educational experience as well.
Some of the life skills our children need to be taught are; cooking, cleaning, lawn care, banking, laundry and much more! While we’re teaching them how to do these things properly and well, we can work on educational lessons too like; math, time, nature studies, chemistry and more.
Using life to teach our children helps make learning come alive for them! They begin to see that all of life is full of lessons and that no matter what you’re doing there is something to learn.
When we allow our children to see the learning opportunities that life provides us, the lessons that have been given to them in textbooks and lesson plans will make sense! We will then begin to see their attitudes about school improve because they see that there is a means to the “madness” of the thing that they call school work.
Another bonus to looking for lessons from every day life is that when we begin to use these opportunities to teach, we’ll also discover things that we can learn along the way. When our children see us learning alongside them, they will be encouraged to continue learning with us!
When we take time to look for lessons in every day life for our children, we’re not only building a balanced education, we’re also raising our children to become responsible and capable adults. This is an important part of our parenting and homeschooling journey, we need to ensure our children are ready for the world before they spread their wings and fly out on their own.
Teaching our children life lessons while they are still at home really is easy to do (and the younger we start the better and easier it is!)! Not only will teaching our children life lessons encourage unity in our homes, but having our kids helping around the home will keep our homes in order, which is beneficial to all homeschool moms!
You can find the rest of the Year Round Homeschooling Tips from this 31 day series here.