Everything Counts as School When You’re Homeschooling

Sports, drivers ed, and volunteering all double as learning experiences that can help kids grow in skill and confidence.

With the right guidance, baking can easily double as a math or chemistry lesson. Vitaly Gariev/Unsplash

Homeschooling is the optimal way to personalize your kids’ education. Why? Because home education is adaptable, efficient, and practical. Pretty much everything your kids do counts as school.

So, let’s look at the many everyday learning opportunities you can incorporate into your homeschool days.

Options for Elementary-Aged Kids

The world is your classroom when you’re homeschooling younger kids. The key to providing them with a personalized education is to look outside the curricula—all the practical life skills you work on throughout the day; the clubs, sports, and music lessons; the volunteer experiences; and your kids’ hobbies all count as school.

During baking lessons, for example, kids work with fractions and measurements. They learn about chemistry as they combine ingredients to create sweet batters and bread dough and gain a better understanding of biology and physics as they observe the properties of yeast.

Do you have a young slugger in Little League or a soccer star who just kicked the winning goal? Team and individual sports practice and game play count as physical education; players will naturally learn about proper nutrition and how the muscular system works, as well as teamwork, sportsmanship, responsibility, and leadership.

Music class can be as simple as weekly music or voice lessons. Or perhaps your kids enjoy doing arts and crafts. Origami, knitting, drawing, photography, making beaded jewelry, and whittling are all acceptable art activities.

And guess what? Those board games you play on family nights can count as school also, as long as your kids are learning something worthwhile. Games such as Monopoly and Cashflow teach financial literacy, while Ticket to Ride and Game of the States teach strategy and geography skills.

Mastering Middle School Learning Opportunities

Once your kids enter the middle grades, it’s wise to gradually give them more freedom. Let them work independently as much as possible and encourage them to dig deeper into their interests. A passion can easily become a half-year or year-long course; kids can conduct research, read books on the topic, and volunteer to gain hands-on experience.

For instance, our daughter was a mother’s helper for family and friends and gained valuable experience, which helped prepare her for babysitting jobs when she was older.

Many homeschooling families like to introduce logic at this age. Your kids can develop and sharpen their logic and reasoning skills as they solve puzzles, read mysterious whodunits, or navigate a corn maze.

Elementary music and voice lessons can easily evolve into participation in a homeschool band or chorus.

If your tween or young teen is a talented thespian, drama club and theater blend language arts and communication skills with creativity and social skills.

It’s worth noting that even though course credits aren’t typically recognized and counted until high school, it’s advantageous to work with your college-bound, technically savvy, or workforce-destined student and introduce essential experiences that can act as prerequisites. As an example, our son’s passion for video games and great analytical mind led him to learn coding from a book, and he eventually took a game design course.

Designing High School Courses and Assigning Credits

There are specific requirements for designing courses and assigning credit for your high school students. Use your state homeschool law as a guide to develop everyday activities and experiences into course credit.

Typically, a half-year course counts as 0.5 credit and a year-long course counts as 1.0 credit. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) identifies three recognized ways to assign credit: 75 to 80 percent completion of a textbook, completion of a specific number of quality hours spent working, and completion of a dual-enrollment class (college class taken during high school).

Visit HSLDA.org or the Fearless Homeschoolers site for a more detailed explanation.

With this information in mind, you can create a driver education class, an American Sign Language class, or a nature survival class, for example. Your student might also want to shadow someone in the field in which he or she is interested in pursuing.

Make Learning Work for Everyone

The beauty is in its simplicity. It’s no secret that homeschooling is a big responsibility and commitment. It’s the most wonderful journey parents can take, but it can also be challenging and stressful. So, when everyday activities or experiences also double as time spent learning, you can relax a little bit and happily check off a few extra lessons on your kids’ to-do lists each day.

If you need a little inspiration, visit Homeschool Hall and Global Student Network for some creative ways to log extra homeschool hours.