Don’t Know What To Teach Your Kids At Home? Here’s How To Create A Good Home Curriculum!

Millions of parents all over the world are embracing homeschooling as a study option for their kids during this COVID-19 pandemic. However, many are at a loss on what exactly they are supposed to teach their kids at home. Are you supposed to stick to their school curriculum? Or keep on giving them new exercises from their textbooks each day?

What if your child’s textbook is stuck in school? And with the lock down still on, you can’t exactly step out and go get a new one. All you have to do is create a curriculum – simple, flexible and should reflect your child’s actual school curriculum.

Why you need a curriculum to teach your kids at home?

No Free-styling

Because you cannot freestyle while teaching your kids. It is counter-effective and leaves you always wondering about what to teach. A curriculum is a guide. It tells you what to teach and when, that way you get to go from letter A to letter Z.

Effective

It is effective. It makes teaching more fluid and organized. Fluid is when you go from A to Z, and you don’t want your kids getting everything all mixed up.

Brief and Simple

It helps you keep your topics short and simple. For example, rather than trying to take everything on the math operation – Division, a curriculum will help break it down into smaller digestible subtopics.

A curriculum tells you to teach from A to Z but when you freestyle, it’s like trying to fix the pieces of a puzzle together without ever seeing the full picture. It’s an outline, you need it.

What subjects should you teach?

Mathematics – Bring them closer to the basic math operations and shapes. Then, you can slowly move on to fractions, decimals, indices, BODMAS etc.

English language – Know the drill? Phones, punctuation marks, grammar, parts of speech (noun, pronouns etc.), words and opposites. There are a lot of things to cover here.

Sciences – Teach basic topics on biology (like the roles of the internal body parts), chemistry – do a simple experiment. Learn about plants and animals, as well.

Arts and crafts – Yay! Time to get your hands real dirty. This is super cool because you can blend it right into any other subject. If you are teaching about animals, you can try and make a few. Trust me, it’s fun.

History and culture – Aren’t we tired that our kids know very little about the past? I am and I know you are too. A great way of introducing them to history and cultures is through the use of storytelling and folklore.

Geography – This could easily be put under sciences. Teach them about the Earth and the solar system, rocks and gem stones, the continents (use a map – you guys can even try to make one), climate/weather etc.

Music – Only if they have an interest in a musical instrument or in singing.

If you do not have their choice of instrument at home, then you can try downloading an app for it.

Social studies or civic education – While we practice social distancing, remember, that this too shall fade. So, teach your kids some social rules and construct.

Lest I forget, what you teach is dependent on your kid’s age/class and the school’s curriculum. You can always get the school curriculum from the schoolteacher and tweak it to make it cooler and more interesting.

Oh, quick tip: If your kid is not a big fan of studying, then instead of inviting the kid to come study math, you could start with a teaser question. Or find a fancier way to phrase the topic, instead of saying you want to teach about rocks, try saying you want to teach about gem stones like gold.

How do you draft the home curriculum to help teach your kids at home?

Having already made a daily schedule for your kids, the next step will be to create their very own home curriculum.

Use the internet, textbooks and their school curriculum.

• The internet already has a number of “online schools” with learning materials/curriculum for kids. They offer their services based on your child’s class and/or age. All you really have to do is to pick your child’s class and ta da! Teaching just got easier.
• All the subjects should not fit in a day.

However, if your child is having difficulty catching up with his class work, then use this opportunity to brush him/her up with the basics. Pick a lower-class learning material to help equip your child.

There is absolutely no need using your child’s current class work to teach him/her if he/she cannot conveniently pass a pop quiz on previous classes.

Remember, stay safe, COVID-19 is not here to stay.