Homeschool Lesson Plans
The best plans are the ones you never make.
That cringy hippy phrase every public school parent expects a homeschooling parent to say. It’s true, to quote Allen Saunders, “Life is what happens while your busy making plans.” I started out making lesson plans. I coordinated a craft project to go along with letters or words. As my kids progressed we cooked to put our new skills to work. I exhausted myself trying to make worksheets to go with each lesson, a fun activity to cement that lesson and sometimes a field trip or scavenger hunt. Despite all my effort, my kids ask questions, as kids do. My well thought out lesson plans turn into a deep dive into why. Then we jump into a rabbit hole of discovery learning why, because public education didn’t give me the why. I was sent to the principles office to sit in the corner for being disruptive.
The best lesson is the one you and your children learn together.
The title is a little misleading, this is not a lesson plan. It is a fun way to challenge kids to learn and formulate a lesson plan on the fly. Random trips to the library, even if its to use the computer to complete school work breaks up the monotony. However, I did stumble upon a book, Rhinos in Nebraska by Alison Pearce Stevens that peaked all of our interests.
As a native Texan, the only history I learned in school was about Texas. I had no idea rhinos were native to the Americas. I learned something too. Which is really fun for kids and how the rabbit hole lesson plan began.
Activities created from Rhinos in Nebraska
- Geography – Studying The U.S. and Africa
- Science Experiment – Ash and Seed Experiment / Plate Tectonics, Fault Lines and Volcanoes
- Math – Creating a timeline
- History – Comparing the timeline to historical events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and comets.
- Gardening – Benefits of ash in gardening, cultivating soil with ash for spring planting.
- Group Discussion – Exploring questions from the book reading.
I do use a variety of sites for curriculum. Splash learn has online learning games, live classes and a few worksheets to go along with the coursework. Math 4 Kids is my favorite site. This site has an endless supply of worksheets on all topics. I mainly use it for supplemental pintables to go with lesson plans, but they do have online activities as well. I have had accounts with Twinkl and Adaptedmind on and off. They’re not my favorite, Twinkl’s content similar to fee worksheets available on Pinterest. Adaptedmind has cute monsters teaching, with long winded segments followed by two or three questions. It’s not designed to keep kids interested in my opinion. While structure is great, I use these sites as an aid, not the source. I chose to homeschool because I want my kids to use critical thinking. I don’t want to sit and lecture any more than they want to sit an listen. We learn and we apply what we learn.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
