by Siew Cheng Hoe

Created on: August 23, 2009

You are busy enough when you do not have to home school your kid. You have to do the laundry, shop for groceries, cook for your family, and clean the house. Now that you decide to home school your kid, you wonder how you can fit home schooling into your busy schedule.

You have to plan your lessons weekly. You should fit home schooling into your life. You can fit some of the housework into the home-schooling schedule. Look at the weekly lessons plan. Think about how you can apply the concept in daily activities. You should plan in such a way that every single activity becomes an object lesson.

For example, on the day that you are teaching mathematics, your kid can make the shopping list, with an estimated cost. When you are shopping for the groceries, let the kid estimate the cost of buying the products. You can incorporate grocery shopping as part of mathematics. You can rewrite some of the word problems, so that grocery shopping becomes a challenging mathematics class.

Try to finish the weekly lessons by Thursday, and leave Friday for revision. If you are able to finish the weekly lessons by Wednesday, you can schedule Thursday as a reading and writing day. Keep Friday as a revision day.

Do not start the lesson immediately after breakfast. Let your kid relax for 20 to 30 minutes. Let him prepare for the lessons. You should do academic lessons in the morning. Start with the toughest subject (the subject that your kid finds tough). You can lecture for twenty minutes and take a ten minute break. Let your kid absorb the lesson. Let him do some questions to prove his ability to grasp the concept.

If you are teaching two language subjects to your kid, you should not schedule two different languages on the same day. You should schedule the easiest academic subjects to the late morning. By now, the energy level of you and your kids are at the lowest.

You can schedule afternoon as homework and revision time. You can also use the afternoon as the project time. If your kid needs to go outdoors for his project, you can let him go to the garden or bring him out for a few hours.

Do schedule science project and physical activity together. Sometimes a field day is also a time for your kid to run wild and enjoy nature. You can teach a lesson on photosynthesis in your garden, letting your kid get enough exercise when he helps you with the gardening.

Do schedule a time for your kid to play. Let him join the sports team, learn swimming and learn gymnastics. Let him develop physically as well as mentally.

Let your kid associate with the kids from the neighborhood. Let your kid associate with the kids from the church. Your kid needs friends, even when he does not have classmates to mix with.

Home schooling is taxing on you and your kid. Do schedule a time to relax, and enjoy life.

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