One of the advantages of homeschooling is that we get to determine what our children study. Now, that doesn’t mean that most everyone doesn’t cover reading, writing, and arithmetic (or their state core standard is their state homeschooling laws require them). However, it does mean that we have the freedom to include additional courses and skills that aren’t typically developed in the traditional school setting. For instance, many of us include the development of life skills during our schooling time.
So what does that mean? Life skills like doing the laundry, cooking, woodworking, farming, gardening, budgeting, grocery shopping and balancing a check book can be integrated into our children’s schooling. These important life skills must be developed for their success as an adult so why not make sure we are doing it as part of their basic schooling.
Most families teach life skills, on some level or another, all the time. For those with students in the traditional school setting, most of this type of teaching and learning must take place after school, extracurricular activities, and homework have been completed. It seems that these important life skills have to take a backseat to everything else simple because of time constraints. That is why I feel blessed that, as a homeschool family, we can take the time during our day to develop these skills.
Remember home economics back in our school days? This is the class you are teaching during the day when you are teaching life skills. You can even integrate some of this teaching into your transcripts for your older students, if you so wish. Working on balancing check books, learning Quickbooks, making a budget, or paying bills with your teenager? Then you likely have covered some of an accounting credit. If you are teaching sewing, cooking, woodworking, laundry, etc, why not bill it as some home economics credit time? These are important skills that your child is learning and is just as valuable as geometry and chemistry. Be sure to include these important subject whenever you can. You will be educating your whole child and your child will be getting the most out of his or her homeschooling experience.
What life skills do you regularly incorporate into your schooling?
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