How do you create awesome weekends that also boost your homeschool efforts? Here is a step by step approach.
Here's what you'll learn in this article:
- Sometimes the weekends take care of themselves with activities or time with friends, but when plans change or the boredom has turned to malaise, it's time for a new approach.
- 4 steps to creating a learning rich weekend that boosts your homeschooling efforts.
- Answers to commonly asked questions about learning as a practice that lasts a lifetime.
- Key takeaways for cultivating a learning rich household.
- Where to learn more about creating the home school experience that you crave.
Learning Can Happen All the Time and Create Memorable and Engaging Experiences for Your Family
Learning as a lifelong practice doesn’t only happen during school hours. As many caregiver-educators point out, learning happens in many experiences from exploring outside to cooking. While learning that is included as part of home school is ideally in a domain that isn’t yet mastered and includes building or practicing a specific skills, the rest of the day includes lots of space for different types of learning.
The weekend can offer that space for other types of learning that wouldn’t necessarily be a fit for home school. When weekends aren’t consumed with other activities, they can go a couple of directions. Your family might naturally fall into lounging or self-directed activities that meet their needs, or they might waffle and never fall into activities that feel quite right. The latter is when that feeling of a lost weekend takes hold—neither relaxing or recharging.
4 Steps for Creating Learning Rich Weekends When You Need Them
Building a learning rich weekend, when you need it, is a great option when you and your family need something extra to settle into an epic weekend. Here are the steps for creating an inspired weekend of learning:
1. What Does Your Family Like to Do Together?
Each family is unique. What your family enjoys may not be what other families enjoy. When crafting a learning rich weekend, take into account what your family enjoys doing together and cater to those strengths. Focusing on your family’s preferences and strengths is a sure way to create fun weekend learning experiences, not ones that drift into school territory.
If your family enjoys coloring or puzzle books, then that might be a great fit for a weekend learning experience that emphasizes togetherness and the enjoyment of doing, but less so for home school because there aren’t explicit new skills or challenges. To be ready for a weekend that needs some inspiration, keep a running list of possible family weekend pursuits in your home school planner.
2. What Supplies Do You Need?
Not all weekend activities will take the same supplies. If your family likes astronomy, but you don’t have a telescope, then that isn’t likely to be a weekend experience that you can pull-off in the moment. However, if you have a bevy of coloring books and puzzle books on the shelves, then pulling them out along with all the colored pencils, crayons, and markers is easy to do.
Beyond the supplies you need for the immediate experience, think expansively about how to turn this into a memorable event for the whole family. Do you put a table cloth down on the floor to add the materials and invite everyone to gather around with blankets and pillows? Do you make tea or order in? Do you create a space on the wall to hang finished pictures? Do you search tutorials for advanced color shading? Adding additional elements to the experience that cater to the five senses will set it apart and allow for deeper engagement.
3. Tailoring Your Learning to the Weekend Space You Have
If you have at least a morning, afternoon, or evening up to the full weekend, then there is space for a learning experience with the family. At least a few hours will give you enough time to get engaged, and a full weekend will give your enough space to go places that you didn’t even imagine.
Let your family lead where the experience goes. Entertain all the ideas with openness and curiosity to add spontaneity. Maybe coloring will lead to researching community classes that the whole family can do next weekend.
4. Executing Your Weekend Experiences
The trick when framing a weekend filled with learning is to approach it as something fun to do together, not a task. This is easier to do if you have a few learning ideas at the ready that the family can vote on and embellish to make their own. If you have a reluctant family member, ask what element can be added to make it more appealing, opt to do their activity next time, or invite doing it just for a bit to see if it starts to become more appealing.
Doing the learning experience is one element of creating a weekend experience. The flourishes and add ons to make it special are equally as important. When adding embellishments remember to excite each of your five senses.
FAQs: Learning Doesn’t Only Happen During Home School
Aren’t weekends supposed to be spontaneous and unplanned?
They can be, and sometimes they are, but having weekend learning experiences at the ready is for when the weekend has stalled. These experiences are designed to make something from nothing like pulling ingredients from the pantry and making a meal. They are intended to cultivate creativity and openness in your family to engage and pursue projects together.
What if my family does not like the same things?
Play to each family member’s strengths. If one family member wants to sit and another wants to run around, then can the first family member be the planner, while the second constructs the fort? If a family member wants to read, while others want to draw, then can that family member read aloud? Because these aren’t school activities with any particular agenda or lesson to impart, allow for creativity and openness to let the experience be shaped into something fun for everyone.
Key Takeaways
- Learning isn’t only for school. Life long learning means that learning happens all the time, and is about how you approach each day.
- Weekend learning is about enjoyment and togetherness. Opt for learning experiences that your family enjoys doing together.
- Tailor the experience. Let the materials and time you have help focus you on what weekend learning experiences are a fit.
- Frame the experience. Set the stage with your family by introducing options, adding embellishments, and inviting participation to let the experience organically evolve.
Where to Learn More
Learn more about getting out of the house when you home school and improving your home school experience.
If you would like more tips and resources for coping with the stresses of homeschooling, consider becoming a member of Crush Home School. With our membership plan, you get monthly guidance delivered to your inbox with downloadable resources and much more. Learn more about becoming a Crush Home School member.