When you decide to homeschool your child, you are committing to taking charge of your child’s education. There are many amazing benefits to homeschooling, but the responsibility and time commitment is significant as well. You probably need to spend a good amount of time planning lessons and units. A great way to end a unit is with a project. Projects help children sum up, review and implement everything they have learned.

Here’s an example of how to organize a project with your child. Let’s assume you’ve just finished a biology unit, a great week long project might be to create an ecosystem in an aquarium. The goal will be to create an environment that can be self-sufficient in the sealed aquarium. While learning about the different cycles of nature, encourage your child to think of the most efficient way to create the ecosystem. Your child can think of ways that nature is efficient and try to mimic these characteristics to create a sustainable and efficient environment.

Teach your child to spend a good amount of time planning before taking any further steps. Planning is often the part of the project children like to skip over or hurry along so they could get to the fun part. But teach your child the popular saying: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.“ Reinforcing the need to plan for a project will help your child establish this good habit for all future endeavours.

Projects like this have proven effective because they allow children to not only make use of the knowledge they have acquired but to also use their creative and organizational skills. Parents find it easier to capture their children’s attention with hands on activities such as unit end projects. Projects also help children recall facts and ideas from the unit and instil them in the memory more permanently.

Once the aquarium is set up, have your child track progress everyday. This will help build observation and recording skills. You child can learn how to use different types of charts and graphs to keep track of the project results. It’s important to teach your child that projects require step by step work and for your child to eventually internalize these organizational steps.

Another super advantage to homeschooling is that you are not limited by the practicalities necessary in a public school. Project ideas are only limited by you and your child’s imagination. For every unit, encourage your child to list ideas for long term project that will help solidify the knowledge they have acquired in a particular unit. Allowing your children to choose their own project ideas will not only enhance their creativity, it will also make them feel like they have a say in their education. This will do wonders for their motivation and enthusiasm.