Creating Homeschool Curriculum
We've talked about choosing curriculum and customizing curriculum. Today, let's take a look at creating curriculum.
Why might you want to create curriculum when there are SO MANY pre-made options available to you? I can think of 3 main reasons:
Your child needs more than a pre-made curriculum provides.
You can't find a pre-made program covering your preferred topic.
You want to create something tailored to your family.
In all cases, I strongly encourage you to think about curriculum creation as a way of gathering and providing resources for your children's studies. You DO NOT need to create everything from scratch! There are many free resources on the internet. Do a search and see what pops up. There's no need to re-invent the wheel!
If your child needs more... Maybe your child needs more practice on a skill. Maybe your curriculum doesn't provide enough information about a certain topic. In these cases, you need supplemental material. You're still using a pre-made program as the core, but you want to provide extra.
For skill practice, you could use some blank paper and handwrite some extra exercises for your child to complete. This is a good solution if you think your child will only need a couple extra sessions. If you anticipate your child may need help over a longer term, you could purchase a specific skills book that provides extra practice. For example, I've bought workbooks featuring well-beloved licensed characters in order to give my kids more practice in skills like addition and multiplication.
To provide more content, I suggest going to the library and letting published books do the work for you. For instance, if you feel like your science program doesn't go as deeply into photosynthesis as you would like, then supplement the curriculum by checking out a kids' book that focuses on that subject. I bet you can even find a free diagram online to color and label.
If you haven't found a pre-made program that covers your preferred topic... Just because you can't find the all-in-one resource you'd love to have doesn't mean you have to do everything from scratch. I suggest piecing together what you can from pre-made resources as much as possible - you'll just be combining them in ways that create a new curriculum.
A couple years ago, we studied world cultures and geography. I wasn't too excited about the pre-made programs I found, so I ended up designing our own. We broke up the year into units based on continents. I made an exhaustive list of library books, bought a few world geography books, and downloaded maps to color. And when it was all said and done, it was my favorite year for social studies :)
If you want to create something tailored to your family... I find a custom-made program can work especially well for short unit studies. For example, maybe you want to liven things up in February (because we all are feeling the drag in February...). Take a topic your family loves, and figure out how you can incorporate math, reading, writing, science, history, and the arts while exploring this one topic.
For example, maybe your family is preparing for a trip to Disney World. For math, you could figure out how many tickets are sold each day and estimate how much revenue Disney makes per day at the park from ticket sales (and there's a good chance you could confirm it online). For reading and writing, you could read old fairy tales and then compare and contrast them to Disney versions. For science, you could study how roller coasters or robotics work. For history, you could read Walt Disney's biography or learn about the history of theme parks. For the arts, you could learn how cartoons are made and try your own hand at drawing characters. And for fun, you could throw in some Disney trivia or behind-the-scenes shows on Disney+.
In all of these examples of creating curriculum, I hope you'll see that the point is not to literally create everything from scratch but to piece together resources to create a meaningful program of study for your child(ren). More often than not, creating curriculum is about combining things in a new way. It doesn't have to be about creating worksheets!
I'd love to know - are you interested in creating your own curriculum? Connect with me through my contact form or your preferred social media network. I enjoy hearing from fellow homeschoolers!
