5 Ways To Make Homeschooling More Fun

Whether you have been forced into homeschooling by the pandemic, or have decided to homeschool a long time ago, you have most likely come to realize that it’s not always a fun activity.

After all, in school there is at least the added benefit of classmates that can inject that bit of interest into an otherwise dull day. At home, when the learning gets a bit tedious, you often just have to plow on.

Let us look at 5 ways that will make homeschooling more fun both for you and the kids.

1. Leave the classroom

One of the best parts of homeschooling is that you can literally take it anywhere. Of course, the current situation may not actually allow you to visit museums and take field trips, but you don’t have to spend your class time sitting at a desk.

Arts and crafts are just the start of a great homeschooling adventure. You can literally build anything, recreate famous historical scenes, draw maps, act out books or poems.

Let your kids’ imagination run wild, and you’ll soon notice they are coming up with all kinds of fun activities, based around the lessons they are reading through. All you need to do is supply the appropriate materials, and an adequate level of spirit.

You can also take your time to teach the kids some age-appropriate life lessons that have nothing to do with the curriculum. This can involve cooking, baking, loading the dishwasher, changing car tyres, and so on.

2. Go on a tour

Speaking of leaving your desk, you can also go on virtual tours (for the time being, until real ones become available again).

Plenty of museums and art galleries are offering a chance to walk their halls from the comfort of your own home, and have specific tours that are tailored to kids. Use them to spice up your homeschooling art and history lessons, and then throw in an interesting documentary on top.

If it is safe, you can also take a bit of a tour around your area. For example going to the park, a nearby field, farm or hill can teach them a lot about plants and animals, how food is made, and make a natural history lesson a lot more interesting.

Not to mention that collecting fallen leaves, flowers or conkers can be a great addition to their scrapbook.

3. Play more games

Naturally, the best way to make anything more fun is to play some games. In the context of homeschooling, these games should be educational ones, and they should of course be tailored to your child’s level of knowledge.

If your child goes to regular school and is only being homeschooled due to the pandemic, ask their teachers for advice on the best educational games. If not, you can ask some of your friends for recommendations. Or, you can just hop online and do a bit of research yourself.

There are plenty of free worksheets available for all subjects, including math, reading comprehension, spelling, and everything in between.

Coming up with your own games, or variations of them, is also a great way to introduce more fun to your lessons. Whether it is counting certain objects, speaking in alliterations or coming up with your own quizzes, don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

4. Get some insider knowledge

Another way to think outside the box is to have others teach your kids. This doesn’t mean you have to get someone to do math with them, or to help them go through their biology lessons. Quite the contrary – ask friends and family to speak to your kids about subjects they are experts in that may have nothing to do with school.

Your parents can talk to them about history, in a fashion. Retelling family stories and talking about times when there were no smartphones or their experiences during turbulent and historically important times will give your kids a glimpse into subjects they would never tackle at school.

Ask different friends who do different lines of work to talk about their jobs, what they do, and some of the skills these jobs require. This will help your kids source out career paths they might one day be interested in in a much more natural way.

5. Don’t be as strict

Finally, try not to be as strict with your kids if and when they get a bit bored, when their attention starts to falter, and if they express a desire to do something other than homeschooling lessons.

These are tough times for everyone, and sometimes it’s perfectly okay to indulge their immediate wishes, and pause teaching and learning for a while. As long as they don’t head straight to the TV, let them read a book, do some arts and crafts, run around in the garden, or spend some time with their family.

A lot of life’s lessons are learned outside of the classroom, and nothing horrible will happen if they do today’s lesson tomorrow.

This also means you need to cut yourself some slack too, and stop demanding too much either from the kids, or from yourself. You will cover all of the lessons, and the kids will do just fine on their exams. Especially if they are not stressed out about them, or by you.

Final Thoughts

Making homeschooling fun isn’t as difficult, especially if you choose to embrace your own childish side, and let your kids lead the way in a new direction of learning that may be a bit more hands on, a lot more flexible, but just as rewarding and immeasurably more enjoyable.