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Homeschool parents can fully customize homeschool curriculum to fit their family’s needs, lifestyle, and budget – which is a huge appeal to so many families. You can create a complete custom fit education for each of your children when homeschooling.
But when it comes to customizing homeschool curriculum, there are very important points you have to consider. Think about the strengths and passions of each child and what they like to learn.
When you homeschool, you have a bit more flexibility in the content that you can structure your days around. One great way to structure and customize your homeschool curriculum is to understand the core belief of your family.
Not only does homeschooling allow a ton more family time to occur, but it also is a great frame of mind to structure your homeschool curriculum around as well.
Here is A Simple Formula to Customize Homeschool Curriculum for your Family
While homeschooling may be being tailored to your child and their learning needs, it takes a family effort to make certain that the homeschool curriculum that you’re teaching is based on the core values of you and your household as well. A great way to customize homeschool curriculum for your child?
Use the word FAMILY as an acronym to guide you in creating the best possible structure for your child’s homeschool curriculum. This little formula is not something I can take credit for. I’ve learned this from other homeschool veterans and I think is too brilliant not to share.
• F is for Faith (or Philosophy).
Understanding what the faith and beliefs of your family are is important in setting a strong foundation for your homeschool curriculum. While not all lessons need to have faith or a religious aspect to it if that is part of your family and your lifestyle, make certain to include that aspect in your daily homeschool planning as well.
For our family, our homeschool curriculum must be aligned with our Christian faith. We want to build a strong faith foundation in our children’s life. In the mornings, we start our homeschool time growing in our faith together as a family. We read our Bible, memorize Scriptures, sing hymns and worship songs, and work on habits and godly character training. We also choose a science homeschool curriculum that teaches from a creation perspective.
• A is for Approach.
Before beginning your homeschooling journey, ask yourself how you plan to approach the day-to-day structure. Do you envision your homeschool to mimic the traditional classroom setting or do you envision it to follow more in the path of Charlotte Mason, which is more a literature-based approach to learning?
Remember, there is no right or wrong method of approach here! It just depends on what is going to work best for you and your child to be able to learn together in the most appropriate environment.
Check out more posts on different homeschool approaches:
- What Is the Charlotte Mason Homeschool Approach?
- A Homeschool Life And Our Eclectic Homeschooling Approach
- An Eclectic, Interest-led, Christ-centered Homeschool Approach
- Our First Year of Homeschool: Approach, Routine & Curriculum.
- Our Unhurried Charlotte Mason Homeschool Approach
Download my free 30 Ways We Homeschool ebook and peek into the homeschool approach, routine, and curriculum of 30 families.
• M is for Money.
Make certain to budget accordingly for your homeschool classroom, lesson plans, and field trips. With you being the educator and funding all the school expenses, it’s important to have a budget and stay on track during the school year.
The beauty of homeschooling is that it can be free if you love the library or super affordable because of initiatives like the annual Build Your Bundle sales where you can save up to 95% in homeschool curriculum. There is no other homeschool sale like it.
You can truly customize homeschool curriculum to fit all your needs and your budget.
Read also:
- 7 Tips to Homeschool Successfully on a Tiny Budget
- How to Save 86% on Homeschool Curriculum Bundles
- Homeschool Freebies Zone: Hundreds of FREE Homeschool Resources
• I – Individual.
Understand that your child is an individual and their learning style needs to be treated as such. Is your child a visual learner, or a doer? Or do they prefer to watch and then try? Whatever they excel in as far as learning style goes, make that a priority in the structuring of your homeschool curriculum.
Want to find out your child style of learning? CLICK HERE.
• L – Lifestyle.
While being able to homeschool is an amazing experience and opportunity, it’s also just as important to understand and find that balance with everything “life” that goes on continuously as well. Understand how your family interacts and use that to enhance the learning opportunities in your home.
Are you a techie family? Book lovers? What is your family’s lifestyle? Relaxed? Unhurried? Do you travel a lot? Then roadschooling can be perfect for you. Your natural rhythm of life is a decisive point to consider when choosing a curriculum.
We are unhurried and we love reading lots of books together. Sonlight Curriculum is a perfect fit for our family lifestyle.
• Y – You.
Remember, you are the person who is going to be the main educator and taking charge of the framework of the homeschool curriculum. Understand your wants and your needs, as well as what your strengths and your areas of improvement are as well. How do you envision the day to day and what aspect are you most looking forward to? Before venturing into homeschooling, talk to your child about your teaching style and how you envision the first few weeks of transition happening.
Using the word FAMILY as an acronym to help to plan your homeschooling curriculum is a great way to really take a step back and understand how homeschooling and your family both have a huge role in working together to succeed.
While homeschooling may be viewed as a way to have alternative options to traditional schooling, it’s also a great way to find your stride together as a family to continue to learn and grow. When thinking of homeschooling as a family function, it tends to bring it to a whole other area that involves not only you and your child but others in the family as well.
The best way to customize homeschool curriculum that works well for you and your family?
Take some time to observe your family and become a student of your children. How do they learn? How do they process information? What makes them excited?
Communicate with them, ask them what they love and what they are looking forward to, and involve the other members of your family to make certain that everyone is on the same page. The family that homeschools together, stays together.
More posts on choosing a homeschool curriculum:
- How To Choose The Right Homeschool Curriculum For Your Family
- Choosing the Perfect Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum
- 8 Favorite Christian Homeschool Science Curriculum
- Custom Made Kids = Custom Made Education
More Help for Your Homeschool
Ana is the unhurried homeschool mom of 3, wife, and homeschool blogger.
She loves to encourage, inspire and empower moms to go from stressed to blessed by providing them with the tips, strategies, and resources they need to succeed. Ana is the founder of They Call Me Blessed and the creator of:
5 Days to Your Best Homeschool Years,
Hebrew for Homeschoolers,
Charlotte Mason Online Conference,
The Homeschool Sisterhood,
Grow Your Blog Partying in 30 Days, and
the Beyond Blessed Life Planner.
She leads a vibrant free community for homeschool moms on Facebook and you can connect with her at www.facebook.com/theycallmeblessedblog.
Hey Ana! We’re currently looking into the best curriculum for our kids. A little ways till we get there but you can never prepare to early when it comes to these kinds of things 😉 We want to raise them and teach them with a faith-based education, and worship and music and Bible stories are all important to us. I’m sure more communication will be needed on this topic with our family just like you said. Thanks! Bless you.
– Christy
Christy, how exciting!!!
We absolutely love Sonlight Curriculum for our kids exactly for those reasons. And it has given them such a heart for missions as well.
I need to share your website with my husband. He is a worship leader. 😀
If you need help crafting the best curriculum for your kids let me know. Feel free to message me at https://m.me/theycallmeblessedblog. Oh, and make sure you join us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/theycallmeblessedmoms/.
Blessings,
Ana.
almost anything can be customized. just need to work through how to do it. 🙂
That’s right, Annette! 🙂
I love this formula! It helps me to remember that anything can be made to fit my family! I just need to learn how they learn best!
So much wisdom here! I love your last 2 points, those were both hard ones for me… but praise God we are figuring this homeschool thing out ????