Homeschooling Tips & Ideas

When a student approaches a perceived challenge in a school subject, it can often lead to critical reflection in both our students and in ourselves. In these moments, it's important to identify the “why” behind the challenge and find ways to navigate through it. What is making this task “not fun”? Is it too challenging? Is it not enough of a challenge? What makes certain materials or subjects difficult for our students? Are they resistant because of a knowledge deficiency or is it a mere challenge to their knowledge base? 

How time consuming is this curriculum to teach? What is the time investment for each lesson? Does it require advance planning and preparation time, one-on-one instructional segments, or both? These are all important considerations when it comes to making a curriculum decision. We convey this information in our orange “Teacher Involvement Time” icon and it is also the part of the FAMILY Way acronym that takes YOU into account. YOU are an important part of the success equation!

It seems that kids these days have it easier when it comes to finding information. Just google it, and bam, there’s the answer! They don’t have to drive over to the library and pull large reference volumes off the shelf just to find the answer to a question or do a quick fact-check. Google is a fact of modern life and is almost essential to our lives as adults. But before our kids start googling, which is inevitable, we can teach them to be good searchers of information outside of the internet. This is an important skill to develop, and it usually means searching through physical books first!

Even if you’ve managed to get into a nice schedule after the holidays, the winter months can seem to drag on, and sometimes winter doldrums set in. Kids are longing to go outside but the weather doesn’t allow it. Why not overcome those winter blues by incorporating games into your homeschool routine? Games offer opportunities for hands-on learning, stimulate creativity, and foster critical thinking skills. Here are a few new games we’ve recently added to supplement the four core subjects that might make your homeschool lessons more engaging and memorable. 

So, your child is reading now—that's cause for celebration! But how do you know they're truly understanding? Discover Charlotte Mason's simple narration technique: a gentle way to check comprehension, build vocabulary, sharpen thinking skills, and transition from oral retellings to written summaries. Perfect for any age, genre, or curriculum, this fun method turns reading into deep, joyful learning!

As homeschool curriculum consultants, we sometimes feel like Curriculum Detectives. We tap into our inner Sherlock Holmes to investigate further into the crisis at hand. More often than not, when we are talking with you, we are helping you dig into the situation—for example, possibly the situation of “my child hates math.” This is the presenting issue, but we cannot stop our investigation there. This is something the Curriculum Consultant Team at Rainbow Resource Center is doing every time we work with a family. We are equipped to evaluate each interaction through the lens of our FAMILY Way, our extensive homeschool curriculum library, and the hive-mind of the team to find the deeper cause. 

Although many homeschooling families start from the very beginning, just as many find themselves homeschooling when that was the last thing they ever saw themselves doing. Maybe you started out sure that your schooling choices would serve your child well, only to be sorely disappointed, again and again. Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back, and you made the call. You pulled your child out mid-year, thinking there had to be a better way. So what do you do now?

If you ask a young child what the Christmas season is all about, you probably won’t hear them say spelling or history or extra homework. Most kids would be happy to skip schoolwork altogether once December rolls around. According to my kids, any and all “school” has a way of crushing the Christmas spirit. How can we have any fun if we have to do math?? But even if you do put your formal lessons aside, that doesn’t mean there still isn’t learning going on, even if it looks different from your usual routine. 

Every year, Rainbow Resource Center receives hundreds of stories from young storytellers pouring their hearts and imaginations onto paper. We just finished up our 11^th annual summer book contest, and once again, I was blown away by the students’ talent! Of course, only a handful of stories could place overall, but regardless of scoring, if a student wrote an entire book, is that still not an amazing victory? They created a story out of thin air! Maybe as the parent of a reluctant writer, you’re wondering, how do I help my student write like that? Or maybe you have a voracious writer who consumes any piece of paper she sees and you’re wondering, how do I help her improve? As a writer who began her journey very young—and self-published three novels as a teenager—I would love to share some encouragement and practical tips for you as you cheer on your young writers.

Some homeschool parents respond with enthusiasm when given an opportunity to teach art. They pull up artist biographies, look up famous works of art, and find ways to practice the techniques of art masters with their children. These parents may or may not be using an art curriculum. If they are, they may be making lesson modifications based on their students’ ages, availability of art supplies, and time. But this isn’t all homeschool parents, is it?