Using your home business as part of your homeschool curriculum
Here's an article by Annette Yen. Club Mom published an excerpt of this article back in April 2006. Enjoy!
A Home Business is a perfect compliment to your home school curriculum. Children of all ages can benefit from working with you in a family business. Try some of these simple tips to find the right home business for your home schooling family:
* Have an initial family brainstorming session. Sit down together over the dining room table and talk about what you like to do together as a family. Talk about each family member's skills and how they might contribute to your family business. Make sure one of the kids who can write can take notes on your discussion. This meeting is not to determine your business, just to start the discussion with everyone.
* Create a family business binder or notebook. Keep your binder in a prominent place (the kitchen!) and give everyone in the family the freedom to jot more notes as they think of them. No thought or idea is a bad one in this brainstorming phase. Have a section for "Business Ideas" and "Book Suggestions". Have a pocket available in your notebook for newspaper clippings and magazine articles. The little ones who might be too young to jot notes in the binder should be encouraged to share their ideas with the older kids or mom and dad who can transfer their thoughts into the binder as well.
* Ask around. Start talking with your extended family, friends, church members and neighbors about your hopes for doing a business together. Ask for their ideas. Often new businesses are formed just from hearing the needs and ideas of people around you. Talk to other home business owners that you know about how they got started.
• Research. Spend some time at the library and/or the Internet researching various topics within your family’s passion areas. Search some work at home websites and read about opportunities already out there. Make sure you spend time investigating to insure that any potential business you consider isn't a work at home scam...there are a lot of them out there so be diligent.
• Meet as a family again. Go through your notebook and cross off any idea that doesn’t sound good to everyone. Talk through the possibilities, read through the articles and start narrowing down your choices. Discuss again each child’s skill level and how they might contribute in the choices you’ve selected as well as any limitations you might have to doing a certain business. The key here is to narrow down to one or two ideas that would involve each member of your family.
Once you’ve found the right business you can begin to craft a family business plan, which will also serve as a curriculum guide for that part of your home schooling year. The fun is just beginning!
A Home Business is a perfect compliment to your home school curriculum. Children of all ages can benefit from working with you in a family business. Try some of these simple tips to find the right home business for your home schooling family:
* Have an initial family brainstorming session. Sit down together over the dining room table and talk about what you like to do together as a family. Talk about each family member's skills and how they might contribute to your family business. Make sure one of the kids who can write can take notes on your discussion. This meeting is not to determine your business, just to start the discussion with everyone.
* Create a family business binder or notebook. Keep your binder in a prominent place (the kitchen!) and give everyone in the family the freedom to jot more notes as they think of them. No thought or idea is a bad one in this brainstorming phase. Have a section for "Business Ideas" and "Book Suggestions". Have a pocket available in your notebook for newspaper clippings and magazine articles. The little ones who might be too young to jot notes in the binder should be encouraged to share their ideas with the older kids or mom and dad who can transfer their thoughts into the binder as well.
* Ask around. Start talking with your extended family, friends, church members and neighbors about your hopes for doing a business together. Ask for their ideas. Often new businesses are formed just from hearing the needs and ideas of people around you. Talk to other home business owners that you know about how they got started.
• Research. Spend some time at the library and/or the Internet researching various topics within your family’s passion areas. Search some work at home websites and read about opportunities already out there. Make sure you spend time investigating to insure that any potential business you consider isn't a work at home scam...there are a lot of them out there so be diligent.
• Meet as a family again. Go through your notebook and cross off any idea that doesn’t sound good to everyone. Talk through the possibilities, read through the articles and start narrowing down your choices. Discuss again each child’s skill level and how they might contribute in the choices you’ve selected as well as any limitations you might have to doing a certain business. The key here is to narrow down to one or two ideas that would involve each member of your family.
Once you’ve found the right business you can begin to craft a family business plan, which will also serve as a curriculum guide for that part of your home schooling year. The fun is just beginning!
posted by Joelle at 8:16 PM
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