Homeschooling: Do I Have To Follow the School Curriculum?
I always get asked how do you homeschool - do you follow the school curriculum?
When making the decision to homeschool, you do naturally feel pressured into needing to follow the school curriculum - I remember looking at the curriculum and asking myself what had I gotten myself into.
From all the blogs I’ve posted on this topic, I’m sure by now you’ve gathered that embarking on this journey can be overwhelming. You put a lot of pressure on yourself to get it right and execute it in a structured way for fear of not wanting to fail your child.
The national curriculum in England, from the DfE (Department for Education) includes 11 subjects, which are taught in primary schools. So I of course set out to create a schedule which incorporated all these subjects.
I bought all the CGP and Colins books, invested in extra books for handwriting, timestables and division. I thought that in order to teach a child, you have to follow the curriculum to the T.
But what’s the point of homeschooling if you’re going to be rigid and stick to the same routine they do in school? Shouldn’t there be some flexibility in learning? And why do you need to use all the workbooks?
Trying to follow the curriculum in the way in which I was programmed to believe, only made homeschooling that much more challenging. And to be honest, I learned pretty quickly that 1. I don’t remember everything that I was taught in school and 2. The methods I use was very different to those currently taught in schools.
So I changed my approach.
Each week we explored the core subjects in different ways, and I found tutor support to be an added bonus. The reminder 8 subjects, we found ways to be creative in learning various topics which is more flexible and supportive to how my child learns.
The key here is to build the curriculum into fun activities and in ways which are of interest to your child. For example, a PE session could be a gym session, going swimming or for a walk. Discussions can be had in this time about why physical activity is good for your health and what health benefits it promotes.
My daughter also enjoys watching the news and documentaries. Now although this is not a part of the curriculum, I do think it’s important that if you’re going to homeschool, you should teach your child things they wouldn’t learn in school. For example budgeting, investment, government, politics. Give them life skills they can use and learn to incorporate these from a young age.
The great thing with taking this approach is that kids start to understand the relevance of subjects they may struggle with or not like, and they also see how subjects intertwine.
For example, we’ve incorporated Food Technology into our lessons. My daughter loves to bake, however you need to understand measurements (Maths), read ingredients (English) and know when to add ingredients so you have a certain consistency (Science). By pointing this out to her, she has started to look at other topics to see where learning overlaps, thus increasing her confidence in how she learns.
What I have learned overall about following the school curriculum is to use it as a guide. You don’t have to get hell bent on trying to cover every topic every week. You can find ways to rather incorporate multiple subjects at once, or focus on a different topic every week which includes parts of the curriculum without the child knowing it.
Remember homeschooling is for your child, so it’s being able to adapt the work to how they learn. I’m not encouraging you to skip or not teach subjects because your child struggles, but finding ways to make learning fun and engaging.
‘Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child’ - Charles Handy
Peace & Blessings,