There’s a version of this principle that sounds like giving up, let the homeschooler choose everything, follow their every interest, never ask them to do anything they don’t want to do. That’s not what we do, and it’s not what I’m describing here. (And I’m not talking about unschooling either.) What I’m describing is more tactical than that.
When a learner has made a choice about some aspect of a lesson — which worksheet, which book, which order to study topics in — they’ve taken some ownership of it. And ownership changes the dynamic. The lesson they chose is slightly harder to resist than the lesson that was assigned, even if the content is identical. This is not a parenting magic trick. It’s just how engagement works.
The ripple effect is worth knowing about. If you use a rotating list of options, returning to the same pool of choices as topics come up, something interesting happens by the time you get to the last option on the list. They’ve chosen everything else ahead of it. They know it’s coming. And they tend to sit down and complete the final task, the one they didn’t choose, with reasonable good humour, because they understand they’ve already had their preferences accommodated. We’ve relied on this more times than I can count.
Practical ways to build choice in
The two-tray approach is one of the simplest and most effective things we do. Set out two trays with the same prompt — the same lesson objective — and different materials. One tray has art supplies. One has writing materials. The learner chooses the tray, and you teach around what they’ve picked. They’ve made a decision; the lesson can begin.
For a lesson that needs listening rather than engagement, the audiobook-plus-art combination earns its place consistently. The objective is the listening: whatever is being absorbed from the audiobook or podcast. The art activity is keeping their hands busy while their ears work – much easier for a learner than asking them to keep still and listen.
We used this with Etta Lemon — an audiobook about the woman who founded the RSPB — alongside a watercolour bird painting lesson found on Skillshare. They found the tutorial themselves, watched it through once, then turned the sound down and painted while the audiobook played. The lesson produced a piece of art, engaged them with a story they found genuinely interesting, and required almost no setup from me. When we finished, they wrote a summary of the first few chapters and we talked over whatever questions had come up; an introduction to a project about the RSPB and the larger context of protected species in the animal kingdom. A simple lesson to facilitate – more effective because the audiobook felt to them almost like the secondary activity, drawing their interest naturally rather than asking it to be forced.
The choice of which poem to study, which artist to focus on, which project title to pursue — these smaller decisions add up to a learner who feels some agency over their education. Which, for the home-educated child who has already given up the social environment and the extra-curricular structure of school, matters.
On guiding the choices without removing them
Choice doesn’t mean unlimited options. It means a curated shortlist, from which the learner picks. Bookmark several pages of a poetry anthology before you hand it over. Mention a topic in conversation a day before you present it as an option, so they have a little context when they’re choosing. Reorganise the bookshelves so the books you’d like them to gravitate toward are the ones at eye level. These aren’t manipulations — they’re the same thing a good teacher does when they present a lesson as if it were an invitation.
The end goal of all of this, the thing we’re actually working toward, is a learner who is confident in their own ability to direct their learning when they need to. That confidence comes from practice. Choosing the watercolour lesson, the audiobook, the poem — these small choices are the practise before you add in weekly folders and autonomous self-led learning.
