Seton Homeschool Lesson Plans: Adjustable Guides for Success

We send lesson plans to help parents with their homeschooling scheduling. Having day-to-day lesson plans is a main reason why many parents choose Seton. Parents and students want to know how they can stay on schedule and be finished with the school year by June.

As parents and students start along the homeschool road, they discover that, like the road to their vacation spot, there are various pot holes, traffic back-ups, and detours.

Inevitably, Dad and Mom need to make adjustments.

Our lesson plans are a suggestion, a recommendation. They are not like the Ten Commandments! They should be adjusted to the needs and abilities of the child. Sometimes they need to be adjusted because of new babies, or health problems, or other family situations.

Your concern and our concern is that the children learn the concepts and the skills. However, each child should advance at the child’s own rate, subject by subject. Some children will advance more quickly in math and slower in English; another child will do the opposite.

The beauty of homeschooling is that each course can be adjusted for each child’s abilities.

Teach the Basics First

At all grade levels, the most important subject is Religion. The content is vital for our children, and we parents don’t want to hold back or skip over anything. We want to give the message that the teachings of Jesus must be learned every day. There cannot be a “vacation” from Jesus, Who loves us so much that He came to this world to teach us how to live and what to believe.

In the primary grades, the subjects of phonics, reading, spelling, and math need to be taught each school day. These should not be skipped.

English is important, but could be delayed when necessary, though writing sentences whenever possible is important for thinking skills.

History and science should be taught at least once a week, but can be done more informally, perhaps on a weekend.

While the basic order of importance should be the same in grades four and five, spelling and handwriting become more important. Handwriting has been relegated to the dust bin of history, as they say, by many schools, but it does come in handy at very important times in our lives. Even writing memos in offices can either speed up production or slow it down based on legibility.

Later Grades

In grades six to eight, all the subjects need to be covered as in earlier grades, but  reading and reading interpretation skills, as well as writing and composition become of great importance. Vocabulary development, based on the workbooks as well as the readers and biographies, is especially important.

Science and history could be done on weekends or in the evenings with Dad or grandparents if more time is needed during the week for the other subjects. However, it is not just the subject matter that should be learned, but also reading-thinking skills should be applied in these subjects as well.

Students and parents should discuss the topics, providing students with an opportunity to use their skills such as outlining, classifying, proving statements, and developing vocabulary.

In these later junior-high grades, composition skills are especially vital to prepare for high school and later college classes. Composition assignments can be given in history and science, even if the assignment is only an explanatory paragraph assigned once a week.

High School Expectations

Once a student is in high school, there is not as much flexibility with courses because the student must take courses expected by the states and the colleges. However, the schedule can still be flexible. Some students take every subject every day, some students take only two subjects at a time for two months.

In high school, students often have other activities, such as sports or jobs, and schoolwork can be scheduled to accommodate these things.

Homeschooling offers flexibility as well as the opportunity to learn more than the basics, to adjust the schedule to achieve not only higher grades but also to achieve an excellent Catholic education. In our current fast-paced society, there is less appreciation for learning and for excellence.

Perhaps our Seton students can change that.