Curriculum is defined as:
1. courses offered by an educational institution,
2. a list of all the courses of study offered by a school or college,
3. a program or plan of activities.
Your "homeschool curriculum" probably matches definition #3, above. New homeschoolers often become confused over "which curriculum to use" or "where to buy a curriculum."
But a homeschool curriculum is simply a "plan of activities" that you use in your homeschool. It need not be an expensive curriculum, nor does it need to incorporate textbooks or workbooks.
Your children will learn more readily and more fully when you and they homeschool in a manner that best complements their unique learning styles.
Observe your child's preferred style of learning -- such as hands-on learning through touch (tactile), or through moving and doing (kinesthetic), or seeing/visualizing (visual), or hearing/verbal (auditory), or a combination of these.
For help determining your child's learning style, check out some of these books:
* 8 Great Smarts for Homeschoolers, by Tina Hollenbeck
* Discover Your Child’s Learning Style, by Mariaemma Willis
* How Children Learn, by John Holt
* Learning All the Time, by John Holt
* The Way They Learn, by Cynthia Tobias
Remember: Homeschooling is not a "school at home." Don’t confuse yourself, or your children, thinking that it should be. You’ll only make it harder on yourself.
As John Holt warned: “To parents I say, above all else, don’t let your home become some terrible miniature copy of the school. Live together, as well as you can; enjoy life together, as much as you can. Ask questions to find out something about the world itself, not to find out whether or not someone knows it.”
Remind yourself each day that your duty is to guide your children, not force instruction upon them. Your role is to help them learn how to learn and to encourage them to seek answers to questions, find materials and information that will help them learn, explore the things that interest them, and allow them the freedom to learn in the style that works best for them.
This, then, will become the curriculum -- the "plan of activities" -- that best suits your children and your family!
For more help creating your own homeschool curriculum, using homeschooling or unschooling activities, or hundreds of educational ideas for weekly homeschool lessons, see our Home page at EverythingHomeschooling.com.
For a pastel painting demo, see "Summer Fields" at MistyGlowStudio.com or on my YouTube channel here: Misty Glow Studio.
Happy homeschooling!
Monday, August 18, 2025
Monday, August 4, 2025
Create Your Curriculum + Weekly Planner Log Book
Welcome back! And best wishes for a fun and educational homeschool year!
Starting out, you might want to create own curriculum based on your family's goals and objectives for your children.
To write your curriculum, you’ll want to list your educational philosophies, goals, and objectives.
You can download the Homeschool Educational Goals PDF here. Then list your goals and objectives for each child and keep with your homeschool papers.
To record daily activities in a logbook, you may use our Weekly Planner Log Book forms. The Log Sheets can be downloaded at this Weekly Planner Log link.
Print as many as you'd like to plan your days and weeks in advance, or to easily jot down the activities and learning events at the end of each day, week by week.
These Google Doc forms might prompt you to request permission, but I'll see the notification and enable downloading.
For more in-depth planning for the upcoming homeschool year, feel free to read the following post.
Happy Homeschooling!
Planning pointers for the coming year:
As you prepare for the upcoming homeschool year, revisit – or create – a list of your educational goals for your children. If you didn’t reach all your homeschool goals last year, simply move them to this year’s list of goals.
Educational goals for your child might include:
* Developing a love of learning
* Enhancing curiosity in special interests or topics
* Finding joy in daily activities or hobbies
* Managing time and responsibilities better
* Volunteering in the community
Educational objectives and outcomes could include:
* Reading classic literature or books by favorite authors
* Trying more advanced science experiments and recording results
* Applying mental math skills or logic for solving problems
* Researching famous people or current events
* Focusing on daily life skills to increase abilities and self-confidence
From these goals and objectives, you can begin planning a curriculum (the knowledge and skills you’d like your child to acquire) along with creating lesson plans (the activities or studies that support or complement your curriculum).
Curriculum Plans
When planning a curriculum, consider your children’s wishes and input on what they’d like to learn in the coming year. Children will often surprise you with the wonderful ideas and learning suggestions they come up with! Together, you and your children can create a curriculum that is fun, interesting, and challenging to ensure a well-rounded education.
To create a curriculum, think about your educational goals, philosophies, or ambitions for your child. Then determine the objectives or plans needed to achieve those goals. These are explained more fully here:
• Educational philosophies center on what you believe your children should learn in order to achieve happiness and success in their lives. This can include morals and values, respect and responsibility, manners and kindness toward others, faith and spirituality, a love for learning, and a love for life.
• Educational aims or ambitions for your children could include life skills and self-reliance; critical thinking and reasoning skills; creative thinking skills; the ability to work well with others; to enjoy one’s work, life, and career; to show love and respect for one’s family; to be a responsible and upstanding citizen; and to contribute to one’s community.
• Learning goals and objectives should support your educational philosophies and aims for your child. For instance:
* Learning self-discipline and self-control is critical to a happy family life and career.
* Proper manners, social skills, and speaking skills are important when working with others or when contributing to the community.
* Good reading, math, science, or technology skills are imperative to all areas of one’s life, from daily living to getting ahead in one’s career.
* Artistic and creative skills add joy and meaning to one’s life.
* Healthy habits and life skills contribute to a long, productive life.
Write a Curriculum
Once you’ve determined your family’s philosophies, as well as your ambitions for your child’s education and the goals or objectives to support those ambitions, you can begin designing the curriculum. But don’t forget to consider your children’s interests and learning styles!
To write your curriculum, you’ll want to list your educational philosophies, goals, and objectives (see the Homeschool Forms link here), and keep them in a special folder labeled “Curriculum.” On the days when you forget where you are headed with your child’s education, reviewing the list of goals and objectives will be a great help!
A curriculum outline for Grade 5 Social Studies, for instance, could include:
* United States history
* Discovery of America and early settlements
* Colonial and pioneer life in America
* American Revolution and independence
* Westward movement
* Geography of United States
* Industrial Revolution
* Natural resources
* Cultural resources and relationships
Lessons and activities you do with your children will be based on the topics noted on a simple curriculum outline, similar to the above outline.
As you continue determining subject areas your child will study (i.e., Social Studies, Language Arts, Math, Science, Technology, Arts and Music, Health, and Life Skills), you’ll want to slant them toward the goals and aims that you have listed for your child’s education.
For instance, a goal for your child might be having a good, healthy life. Therefore, in studying the human body in Science, you might want to:
* Emphasize lessons on health and nutrition
* Focus on the way the body functions
* Learn how the bones and muscles work in tandem
* Determine how blood carries nutrients and oxygen to all parts of the body
* Research the respiratory and digestive systems
* Point out how proper nutrition, exercise, and healthy habits help the body function as it was designed to function.
As you can see, once you have your goals established for your child (for example, being a healthy individual), you’ll be able to focus on the objectives that you want the lessons to convey (in this case, how to achieve and maintain a healthy body).
Children master skills at varying ages and rates. Keep in mind that your child might read well at age 6, but another might struggle with reading at age 8. Or one child might grasp the relation between fractions and decimals at age 8, while another might not grasp the concept until age 10. One child might write well in cursive at age 9; another may not display attractive penmanship until age 12 or later. So, consider your child’s unique skills and abilities when setting educational goals and objectives.
Less Formal Curriculum
Designing a curriculum might seem like a lot of work. Yet, most parents already have an idea of the educational goals or ambitions for their children, even if they haven’t written them down in a formal outline.
Most parents are already in tune with their children’s interests, abilities, and learning styles, so it might not be necessary to document the objectives of each lesson. You might not need to go into detail regarding the studies or activities that will complement your child’s learning goals.
Unschooling
Unschooling is a nice option for many families. In an unschooling environment, the curriculum tends to accommodate the children’s curiosity and their interest-led activities. Don’t worry! When children are interested in a topic, they will learn! Plus, they’ll retain what they learn for a longer period of time.
If you need to present evidence of the “curriculum” you use for your “unschooled homeschool,” you can illustrate how your children’s interests and activities (such as their hobbies, experiments, creative projects, talents, discussions or books read) accomplish the goals and philosophies your family believes in – even in an unschooling environment.
Convey the unschooled curriculum with photos or short videos showing daily or weekly activities, projects, or experiments. Your child can create artwork or build models or sculptures depicting various projects. Perhaps, together, you can build a bookcase or shelves to hold the projects, sculptures, art, experiments, and displays, then take photos or brief videos of that, too. This serves as proof of continuous learning, regardless of your family’s style of home education.
To record activities in a logbook, you may use our Weekly Planner Log Book forms. The log sheets can be viewed and printed via this Weekly Planner Log link. You may use the log sheets to plan your days and weeks in advance, or to easily jot down the activities and learning events at the end of the day.
Create Lesson Plans
Lesson plans are the activities or studies that complement and carry out the intent of the curriculum and educational goals for your children.
For instance, one of your goals might be for your child to play an active part in your community as a caring, concerned individual. Therefore, you might want to create a lesson plan for Social Studies that has the objective of interacting with others for the good of the community.
Lesson plans, for this objective, could include researching the history of volunteerism in communities. Examples could include Benjamin Franklin, who helped to establish the first volunteer fire department, or Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross through volunteering her services. Your children could read biographies of these people, as well as books on how to volunteer. Then they could write or share their thoughts and ideas on how they could help others in your community.
Other parts of the lesson plan could include drawing posters of volunteers, visiting the headquarters of local volunteer associations, and taking an active part in community volunteer programs, such as canned food drives, clothing or toy collections, animal shelter assistance, or visiting with the elderly in nursing homes. Be sure to take photos or videos documenting these activities, too.
In our next post, we’ll cover Lessons Plans in more detail. Stay tuned!
Happy homeschooling!
Starting out, you might want to create own curriculum based on your family's goals and objectives for your children.
To write your curriculum, you’ll want to list your educational philosophies, goals, and objectives.
You can download the Homeschool Educational Goals PDF here. Then list your goals and objectives for each child and keep with your homeschool papers.
To record daily activities in a logbook, you may use our Weekly Planner Log Book forms. The Log Sheets can be downloaded at this Weekly Planner Log link.
Print as many as you'd like to plan your days and weeks in advance, or to easily jot down the activities and learning events at the end of each day, week by week.
These Google Doc forms might prompt you to request permission, but I'll see the notification and enable downloading.
For more in-depth planning for the upcoming homeschool year, feel free to read the following post.
Happy Homeschooling!
Planning pointers for the coming year:
As you prepare for the upcoming homeschool year, revisit – or create – a list of your educational goals for your children. If you didn’t reach all your homeschool goals last year, simply move them to this year’s list of goals.
Educational goals for your child might include:
* Developing a love of learning
* Enhancing curiosity in special interests or topics
* Finding joy in daily activities or hobbies
* Managing time and responsibilities better
* Volunteering in the community
Educational objectives and outcomes could include:
* Reading classic literature or books by favorite authors
* Trying more advanced science experiments and recording results
* Applying mental math skills or logic for solving problems
* Researching famous people or current events
* Focusing on daily life skills to increase abilities and self-confidence
From these goals and objectives, you can begin planning a curriculum (the knowledge and skills you’d like your child to acquire) along with creating lesson plans (the activities or studies that support or complement your curriculum).
Curriculum Plans
When planning a curriculum, consider your children’s wishes and input on what they’d like to learn in the coming year. Children will often surprise you with the wonderful ideas and learning suggestions they come up with! Together, you and your children can create a curriculum that is fun, interesting, and challenging to ensure a well-rounded education.
To create a curriculum, think about your educational goals, philosophies, or ambitions for your child. Then determine the objectives or plans needed to achieve those goals. These are explained more fully here:
• Educational philosophies center on what you believe your children should learn in order to achieve happiness and success in their lives. This can include morals and values, respect and responsibility, manners and kindness toward others, faith and spirituality, a love for learning, and a love for life.
• Educational aims or ambitions for your children could include life skills and self-reliance; critical thinking and reasoning skills; creative thinking skills; the ability to work well with others; to enjoy one’s work, life, and career; to show love and respect for one’s family; to be a responsible and upstanding citizen; and to contribute to one’s community.
• Learning goals and objectives should support your educational philosophies and aims for your child. For instance:
* Learning self-discipline and self-control is critical to a happy family life and career.
* Proper manners, social skills, and speaking skills are important when working with others or when contributing to the community.
* Good reading, math, science, or technology skills are imperative to all areas of one’s life, from daily living to getting ahead in one’s career.
* Artistic and creative skills add joy and meaning to one’s life.
* Healthy habits and life skills contribute to a long, productive life.
Write a Curriculum
Once you’ve determined your family’s philosophies, as well as your ambitions for your child’s education and the goals or objectives to support those ambitions, you can begin designing the curriculum. But don’t forget to consider your children’s interests and learning styles!
To write your curriculum, you’ll want to list your educational philosophies, goals, and objectives (see the Homeschool Forms link here), and keep them in a special folder labeled “Curriculum.” On the days when you forget where you are headed with your child’s education, reviewing the list of goals and objectives will be a great help!
A curriculum outline for Grade 5 Social Studies, for instance, could include:
* United States history
* Discovery of America and early settlements
* Colonial and pioneer life in America
* American Revolution and independence
* Westward movement
* Geography of United States
* Industrial Revolution
* Natural resources
* Cultural resources and relationships
Lessons and activities you do with your children will be based on the topics noted on a simple curriculum outline, similar to the above outline.
As you continue determining subject areas your child will study (i.e., Social Studies, Language Arts, Math, Science, Technology, Arts and Music, Health, and Life Skills), you’ll want to slant them toward the goals and aims that you have listed for your child’s education.
For instance, a goal for your child might be having a good, healthy life. Therefore, in studying the human body in Science, you might want to:
* Emphasize lessons on health and nutrition
* Focus on the way the body functions
* Learn how the bones and muscles work in tandem
* Determine how blood carries nutrients and oxygen to all parts of the body
* Research the respiratory and digestive systems
* Point out how proper nutrition, exercise, and healthy habits help the body function as it was designed to function.
As you can see, once you have your goals established for your child (for example, being a healthy individual), you’ll be able to focus on the objectives that you want the lessons to convey (in this case, how to achieve and maintain a healthy body).
Children master skills at varying ages and rates. Keep in mind that your child might read well at age 6, but another might struggle with reading at age 8. Or one child might grasp the relation between fractions and decimals at age 8, while another might not grasp the concept until age 10. One child might write well in cursive at age 9; another may not display attractive penmanship until age 12 or later. So, consider your child’s unique skills and abilities when setting educational goals and objectives.
Less Formal Curriculum
Designing a curriculum might seem like a lot of work. Yet, most parents already have an idea of the educational goals or ambitions for their children, even if they haven’t written them down in a formal outline.
Most parents are already in tune with their children’s interests, abilities, and learning styles, so it might not be necessary to document the objectives of each lesson. You might not need to go into detail regarding the studies or activities that will complement your child’s learning goals.
Unschooling
Unschooling is a nice option for many families. In an unschooling environment, the curriculum tends to accommodate the children’s curiosity and their interest-led activities. Don’t worry! When children are interested in a topic, they will learn! Plus, they’ll retain what they learn for a longer period of time.
If you need to present evidence of the “curriculum” you use for your “unschooled homeschool,” you can illustrate how your children’s interests and activities (such as their hobbies, experiments, creative projects, talents, discussions or books read) accomplish the goals and philosophies your family believes in – even in an unschooling environment.
Convey the unschooled curriculum with photos or short videos showing daily or weekly activities, projects, or experiments. Your child can create artwork or build models or sculptures depicting various projects. Perhaps, together, you can build a bookcase or shelves to hold the projects, sculptures, art, experiments, and displays, then take photos or brief videos of that, too. This serves as proof of continuous learning, regardless of your family’s style of home education.
To record activities in a logbook, you may use our Weekly Planner Log Book forms. The log sheets can be viewed and printed via this Weekly Planner Log link. You may use the log sheets to plan your days and weeks in advance, or to easily jot down the activities and learning events at the end of the day.
Create Lesson Plans
Lesson plans are the activities or studies that complement and carry out the intent of the curriculum and educational goals for your children.
For instance, one of your goals might be for your child to play an active part in your community as a caring, concerned individual. Therefore, you might want to create a lesson plan for Social Studies that has the objective of interacting with others for the good of the community.
Lesson plans, for this objective, could include researching the history of volunteerism in communities. Examples could include Benjamin Franklin, who helped to establish the first volunteer fire department, or Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross through volunteering her services. Your children could read biographies of these people, as well as books on how to volunteer. Then they could write or share their thoughts and ideas on how they could help others in your community.
Other parts of the lesson plan could include drawing posters of volunteers, visiting the headquarters of local volunteer associations, and taking an active part in community volunteer programs, such as canned food drives, clothing or toy collections, animal shelter assistance, or visiting with the elderly in nursing homes. Be sure to take photos or videos documenting these activities, too.
In our next post, we’ll cover Lessons Plans in more detail. Stay tuned!
Happy homeschooling!
Monday, June 30, 2025
Easy Textured Paintings for Fun
Also, you'll see a sneak peak of my Home Art Studio!
The painting tutorial and sneak peak can be viewed on my YouTube channel, Misty Glow Studio, at this link: Misty Glow Studio.
Use this summer to create more, try new hobbies, finetune special skills, and simply de-stress through art and creativity.
Have a great summer!
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Summer Hobbies + Learning
Summer provides ample opportunities to explore, observe, relax, and recharge.
Nature abounds and hobbies await! A child can simply step outdoors -- with pencil or paints in hand -- to capture their world around them.
The most learning occurs when children (or adults) immerse themselves in the things that interest them the most.
Allow plenty of free time for children to stretch their wings, try new hobbies, or pursue a multitude of interests in the weeks to come.
This "Misty Lake" painting was inspired by watching the mist rise above the lake, resembling ghosts floating on top of the water.
Take a walk to a nearby lake, pond, or stream, and see what types of scenery your children might be inspired to sketch or paint.
Then research or read about the scenes they capture. The resulting knowledge, skills, and enjoyment are priceless!
This "Misty Lake" tutorial can be viewed on my YouTube channel, Misty Glow Studio, at this link: Misty Lake.
Have a great summer!
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Science of Colorful Sunrises and Sunsets
Why are sunrises and sunsets so colorful? The blue of our sky and the vivid oranges of sunrises and sunsets are caused by sunlight traveling through particles in the air. At sunrise or sunset, the light from the sun travels a longer path through the atmosphere, which removes most of the blue color of the sky, leaving the bright oranges and pinks that we see.
Isaac Newton discovered that “white light” was a combination of the colors of the rainbow. He used a prism to separate a ray of sunlight into a multitude of colors. This is an experiment you can do, using a prism or even a stream of water from a hose in the sunlight, to see the different colors of the rainbow.
The wavelengths of colors determine the varying colors of our days. Blue-ish colors have shorter wavelengths. Red-ish colors have longer wavelengths. So when the sunlight travels the longer path – or longer wavelength – in the mornings and evenings, we see those red-ish colors in the sky.
Learn more about colors, wavelengths, sunrises, and sunsets here:
1. Optics 4 Kids: https://www.optics4kids.org/what-is-optics/scattering/why-is-the-sky-blue-why-are-sunsets-red
2. Sunrise Facts for Kids: https://kids.kiddle.co/Sunrise
3. Sunrise Sunset PDF: https://www.frostscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Lesson-3-Sunrise-Sunset.pdf
4. Curious Kids Sunsets Sunrises: https://www.space.com/curious-kids-how-does-the-sun-make-such-pretty-colours-at-sunsets-and-sunrises
5. Sunrise Colors: https://mountwashington.org/why-is-sunrise-so-colorful
6. Paint a Sunrise! A demonstration of the painting above can be seen on my YouTube channel, Misty Glow Studio, at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jnmtiFb1_w Bright Orange Sunrise.
Try painting a sunrise or sunset you’ve seen!
Happy homeschooling!
Monday, March 31, 2025
Stormy Weather, Stormy Times, Weather Experiments
This skirmish between warm fronts and cool fronts results in rising updrafts of warm, moist air and downdrafts of cool, dry air. Add in the varying winds from one direction of a warm front interacting with winds from a different direction of a cool front, plus rapidly changing temperatures, you’ll often get thunderstorms or even tornadoes.
But as spring continues marching forward, and as winter finally concedes and gives up the fight, the stormy weather soon settles down. We’ll still get some rain showers in the summer. But the severe, turbulent storms of spring thankfully calm down.
Just like in life, we might have some clashes and disagreements with others at times. Tempers – like temperatures – might rise. Cooler attitudes – like cooler weather – can calm things down. And always, there will be sunnier days, gentler breezes, cloud-free skies, and beautiful rainbows.
Even in the face of storms – in weather or in life – we can be brave, we can be calm, and we can find beauty and peace.
Here are Fun Weather Experiments on making storms, thunder, lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, clouds, rainbows, paintings, and more!
1. Weather Wiz Kids: https://www.weatherwizkids.com/weather-experiments.htm
2. Science for Kids: https://www.science-sparks.com/weather-science-for-kids
3. Science Fun: https://www.sciencefun.org/kidszone/experiments/weather-science-experiments
4. Make Rainbows Outdoors: https://bigbangeducation.com.au/make-a-rainbow
5. Paint a Stormy Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrfXSWJh-I8
This is a video I did of my Stormy Sea and Sky Painting (shown above). View the video to see the techniques, then try a stormy painting or artwork of your own!
Note: Subscribe to our Newsletter, using the Subscribe area at the top of the column on the right. Just enter your email address, and you'll receive our regular newsletters.
Happy homeschooling!
Friday, February 28, 2025
Changing Seasons + Nature Studies
As Winter slides into Spring, we see remarkable changes all around us. Winter snows and chilly temperatures are behind us, and warmer weather and sunny skies are ahead of us.
The same is true for our homeschool experiences. We can open ourselves to remarkable changes, to sunnier times, easier days, and spectacular studies and learning.
We need only look to nature to inspire us. Everything around us looks brighter, cheerier, more colorful. Follow Mother Nature's lead and live in the excitement of spring, of flowers blossoming, birds singing merrily, and beautiful new changes outside our windows almost daily.
From our observations of these things, we find peace and hope. From our interactions with nature -- up close and personal -- we learn new information, acquire vast knowledge, and keep these wonderful experiences in our memories indefinitely.
This week, I spent time reviewing my experiences painting nature scenes, mainly winter scenes, and recalling the falling snow -- probably the last snowfall of the season. And I treasured those experiences. I've shared them through a video here on YouTube -- Nature Inspired Art -- from my art studio, Misty Glow Studio.
Take time to paint your experiences from this past winter, or sketch or draw or create your memories in some way. And plan ahead for the spring months to come. When you can take your learning experiences outdoors, into nature, a park, a playground, or a forest, the learning becomes much more real and profound.
Here are just a few inspiring books to read for the spring months ahead:
* Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring
* The Hidden Rainbow: A Springtime Book For Kids
* My Forest Is Green
* Make Art with Nature: Find Inspiration and Materials From Nature
* Backpack Explorer: On the Nature Trail
* Big Book of Nature Art
* Science in the Wild: Explore, Discover, and Learn from Nature
Happy homeschooling!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)