Homeschooling your children means taking responsibility for their education, but with this responsibility comes an array of amazing benefits. One of those benefits is the freedom you will enjoy in setting a curriculum that fits your family’s values and your child’s interests. Projects are important part of any homeschooling curriculum. Once you’ve chosen your curriculum and set goals for each unit, add projects to the end of each unit to offer your child an effective way to review and use all of the knowledge they have acquired.

Let’s take a look at how you can include projects into unit studies. If your child has just finished a biology unit, a great week long project to sum up the unit might be to create an ecosystem in an aquarium. The goal of this project is 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 contemplate various ways to put together such an ecosystem. Remind your child that nature is a great place to look for ideas. Nature is full of efficient and self-sustaining ecosystems that your child can study and mimic to create his/her own efficient environment.

Projects provide great opportunities to teach your child organizational skills. Explain the importance of planning to your child. Any successful project must begin with a detailed plan. Children often prefer to rush the planning in order to get to the fun stuff. But remind your child of the popular saying: “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Encouraging thoughtful planning will help your child establish this good habit for all future endeavours.

After your child is done detailing the plan, it’s time to gather the required materials. You child should have a list of supplies and you can help your child gather these materials from home or from the store. You can come up with a project budget and teach your child how to pull off a project while staying within budget. Small budgets are opportunities to get creative and come up with alternatives for expensive materials.

When it comes time to set up the project, most parents are tempted to pitch in and help their children create tidy, good looking aquariums, but this is actually counter productive. You can offer your child some assistance in setting up the aquarium but allow your child to do as much of the work as possible on their own. This is not only important for their learning, but also for their self-esteem and sense of pride when the project is complete.

Once your child is done setting up the ecosystem, have them track progress every day. This is an opportunity to build observation and recording skills. You child can learn how to create and read different types of charts and graphs that will help keep track of progress and results. Projects require patience and your child must learn to follow step by step instructions in order to end up with a successful project. After completing several projects, your child will internalize these organizational steps and become a more efficient project manager.

These types of projects are also a great way to involve the entire family your child homeschooling activities. You can place your child’s ecosystem in the kitchen or family room where all family members can observe and comment on the project. Your child can even present the project to the family and lead a question and answer session. This will instil a sense of pride in your child and help create positive feelings about his/her education. Only homeschooling parents have the advantage of watching and encouraging their child through all steps of a project. Parents with children in public schools often only get to see the final products.

Projects like this are an indispensable part of your child’s homeschool education. Projects allow the child to not only make use of the knowledge they have acquired but to also use and improve their creative and organizational skills. Parents find it much easier to engage their children while working on projects. When you homeschool, project ideas are not limited by the practicalities necessary in a public school, but can be as varied and wide reaching as your child’s imagination. Allowing your children to choose their own topics for project will not only spur their creativity, but will offer them a say in their education. This will do wonders for their motivation and enthusiasm.