Home education doesn’t have to mean textbooks and strict lesson times. It can mean teaching English through comic books, maths through games, science through play. It can also mean combining all of the academic and non-academic skills you want (or need) your children to learn into lessons that look nothing like school at all.
Following their interests is a great way to keep home-learners engaged and using what you have to hand to create lessons is a great way to make planning less stressful for home educators – it also helps keeps the budget down!
Pre-planned & purchased unit studies can be useful tools for planning homeschool lessons (and many unit studies can be repurposed into more than one lesson, keeping the actual cost per lesson low) but you often don’t need to buy resources to teach the topic or skill, you can use things that you have around.
Lesson resources can be found in newspapers and articles, on posters and in tv shows, in films and nature, daily life and world events, current affairs, history and even video games!
A good resource might be one that generates a lesson itself, adds information to a unit study or sparks curiosity to develop a skill or learn more about a topic.
Collecting Home-Ed Resources
I say collecting home-ed resources because if you get into the habit of filing/bookmarking potential resources as you go about everyday life, planning a lesson targeting a specific skill or academic topic becomes easier. It’s easier to have a stash of resources to look through than to look for the perfect one – that’s a home educators’ rabbit-hole time-loss trap! A resource doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to do what the lesson requires of it; it’s a tool to give information or support home learners working on a skill set.
For home educators, it is infinitely useful to have a supply of resources you know you can pull a writing exercise from, use to practice data-based skills, inspire a science-based activity or to inspire creativity and expression.
We keep random resources – those not intended for any specific unit study – as part of a grab-and-go lesson folder to ensure there are always lessons ready for home learners to tackle independently, or under non-teacher supervision.
In the home-ed ‘random’ resource folder, we keep:
- Newspaper articles: Any news piece that might be interesting for home learners to look at; either bookmarked as a digital resource or added to a ‘lucky-dip’ folder in the homeschool supplies cupboard.
- Brochures / Catalogues: Data! Use numbers for maths lessons that relate to the home learners’ current area of study, look at products as part of a business studies topic; add interest to geography and history lessons using travel brochures or compare the differences (in format and information) between online and offline brochures/catalogues
- Posters: Use for art inspiration, practice writing short & snappy sentences, & for ‘what do you think’ style lessons (similar to asking students to read only the title and then guess what a poem might be about)
- Art: Photos of art around you (graffiti, art in local spaces, museums, coffee shops etc); postcards, calendars, old picture books; old art of their creation to return to and update
- Anything that can be made into a collage of any kind – collages are excellent ways for students to mind-map projects, recap their knowledge on a specific topic, make vision boards to work towards goals or experiment with creativity.
Additionally to resources focused on written text, data or artwork, any documentaries or TV shows that look interesting are added to a list for home learners to choose from. Multimedia resources make homeschool lessons more interesting and resources such as documentaries are fantastic for visual learners.
Example Lesson Material Source – a Random Waiting Room Poster
- Which languages can you identify?
- Can you guess the others?
- How can you check?
- Place the language on the map
- Memorise – add an extra lesson on using flashcards to memorise and revise (Quizlet is a great resource for making flashcards.)
The lesson created from this resource includes the study of geography, languages, online literacy, and includes memorisation practice– a vital skill as they move through academic learning.
Developing a skills tool kit is an important part of home education. Little things we might not think of as we go about day-to-day lessons are often lessons in themselves
Using a printer, for example; it’s a necessary skill but one that can tie students up in knots if they haven’t been taught how to rescale/resize images or print large images onto A4 (the Excel/Google Sheets way is easiest). Teaching non-academic skill sets during academic lessons can help students struggling with the actual lesson objective to leave the classroom feeling they have achieved something.
Example Lesson Material Source – Competition Details in a Newspaper
- Think of a cover design & draw a draft outline
- Check its uniqueness; search online for Harry Potter book cover designs
- Re-read the section of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone‘ that relates to the design (eg. a description of Harry) and check the descriptions match the design
- Experiment with art mediums to complete the design
- Address an envelope
This lesson asks the learner to research online. It opens discussions about plagiarism and includes a ‘lesson’ that would, in school, be a separate lesson (addressing a letter). Most importantly it allows learners to play with their artistic style and encourages them to take pride in the work they produce, having the confidence to enter the competition.
Reading the newspaper article is a separate lesson, in and of itself.
Combining lessons with something that follows an interest takes the pressure off the ‘school’ side of the activity making learners more relaxed and open to learning.
Encouraging home learners to add to the folder of homeschool resources makes creating lesson plans for skills easier for the homeschool parent because the learner is already interested in the materials! You’re going to teach it – they need to learn it! Making home education (& lesson planning) a team effort is an effective way to keep students engaged.
Example Lesson Material Source – Newspaper Article
Ask home learners to:
- Read the article independently – noting any unfamiliar vocabulary
- Use a dictionary to learn the meaning of any noted-down words
- Read aloud
- Talk about the article
- what was the article about? (ask them to summarise)
- what did you learn?
- was it interesting – what was interesting? (did anything in the article spark curiosity or imagination? note it down for a future lesson)
- Find any locations mentioned on a map
In this lesson, the homeschooler extends their vocabulary, practices pronunciation, and discusses something they’ve read. The lesson asks them to use geography skills, use digital literacy skills to find information and encourages them to try a different writing style – summarising the article.
Example Lesson Material Source – Newspaper quote
A good cover should tell you what it feels like to read a book
Extract from above article
- Do you agree or disagree?
- Can you give an example of a good book cover?
- Can you give an example of a bad book cover?
- Explain your reasons.
This lesson asks the student to read a quote out of context, practice discussion skills and think about visual expression (art).
One newspaper article = three complete lesson plans!
Add an extension lesson asking learners to find out more about Thomas Taylor and write a brief biography or to learn more about the job of a children’s book illustrator. If it sparks interest, students could explore the world of illustration/publishing etc as part of an interest-led learning study.
Planning lessons sometimes means finding resources that teach a specific topic/skill; other times open-ended lessons that encompass cross-subject skills suit the student better. I’ve found that the more random (or fun) the materials, the more engaged they’ll become with the lesson; more focused on tasks.
The more fun you can bring into lessons, the more engaging those lessons will be and the more your homeschooler will remember. Curating a home-education inbox (and social media feed) helps maintain a steady stream of potential lesson resources, and once you start actively looking for home-ed resources, there are lesson materials everywhere!
Get your village involved!
Home education is something home learners may enjoy but still feel different because of.. How many books talk about the first day of school rather than kitchen-table-lessons at home?
Encouraging your family/friends/community to collect things that can be used as lesson resources – pamphlets, photos of cool buildings/places/art etc – can help normalise the idea of home education as a schooling choice.
Asking your village to share things of interest with your learners encourages learners to connect with the topic as a way of communicating with their loved ones. If homeschoolers build a presentation or complete a project based on a resource shared with them, sharing that finished school work with the giver is a great way to help home learners develop confidence & presentation skills.