Using Chores To Support your Home Education Lesson
Homeschooling is going to look different to every family. Everyone has their own schedule and focus regarding their children’s education, and with different family dynamics, what works for one could be entirely unsuitable for another.
But one thing that can be consistent from homeschooling family to family is how they incorporate real-life educational lessons and skills into the curriculum. The flexibility of homeschooling means that you can adapt and change your lesson plans to suit your life if need be and look at alternative methods of teaching and activities that offer a great lesson.
One such aspect is to use chores to help you support your lessons and give real-world examples and problems for your children to tackle on a daily basis.
The lesson can be as complex or simple as you like, and it doesn’t even need to be a focused lesson, just part of your day. However, you can guarantee your children will still get an education supporting their development regardless of your approach.
But what are the lessons you can teach when using chores?
Teach Math through Chores
Math is something that crops up time and time again in our lives, so it makes sense that you use these everyday experiences to support your numerical learning and apply what you have learned in general day-to-day activities.
From sticking to a budget in a store to counting out the right amount of cash to pay at the checkout with. You can use math when cooking to help you weigh out the ingredients of a recipe or to alter the volumes you need to make different size batches, e.g., making 16, not 12 cupcakes or this smashed potatoes recipe.
A Home Education Lesson on Responsibility
We’ve all seen the crying doll experiment teens bring home from school to teach them about the responsibility of having a baby. But if you don’t want to go down this route or it isn’t age-appropriate, using chores can be the next best thing to teach responsibility.
It can be something small like designating one child to collect in all the pens and crayons each day to use the next day. If they don’t collect them, no one has any to use, so they are responsible for making sure they are where they need to be.
It can be allowing older children to pick what they learn for a day or a week and making them responsible for planning out the classes and researching the information for younger siblings or even being in charge of lunch for a day.
Geography Taught Through Chores
From navigating your local neighborhoods to get some shopping in, to helping clear the garden or create a wildflower reserve for local wildlife, chores in and around your home can help your child learn more about the world they live in and how it impacts their life.
They can learn navigation as part of discovering more about the local area and how it was developed as they find their way around to go pick up a pint of milk or about the environment in your local area for analyzing soil, planting flowers, fruits, vegetables, and more.
Teach Your Child Reading and Writing
Writing notes or lists to remember to do things around the house, making chore charts to plan out who is doing what chores and when, and reading instructions on cleaning products or appliances in the home can support their literacy and help to get them learning in a way that doesn’t feel like they’re learning.
They can read directions from recipe books, they can write their recipes or meal plans, and so much more; chores provide ample opportunities to read and write.
Chores and Chemistry
Kitchen chemistry is learning how different ingredients mix together and what the end results are. Cleaning can help you teach your children what happens when you use different chemicals and which products work well for different types of dirt or stains.
Things like dusting, unblocking sinks, cleaning clothes, and more can all support a STEM-focused education and provide valuable learning opportunities.
Final Thoughts on Using Chores to Teach a Home Education Lesson
Homeschooling has so much more freedom than entering your child into the school system from a young age. Having carte blanche over what they learn and how they learn can help you to give your child a more rounded experience that incorporates many aspects of life to teach your children without it feeling like a classroom lesson.
Chores can help you to not only lighten the workload but also help you to put what you learn to good use and teach your children in a different way to support their education and development.
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