Things You'll Need:
- Your current curriculum
- Internet access
- Pen
- Paper
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Step 1
Evaluate what you are currently doing. Ask the child you are teaching what they like and what they don't like about the school day. Use this information to change things for the better. For example, when I asked my daughter what she liked about her day she told me looked forward to doing arts and crafts, computers, or cooking after her lessons. This allowed me to use these things as a good motivator to get her to do all her other work first.
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Step 2
Determine why your child doesn't like something. My daughter was bored with the math curriculum, so I looked into other curricula.
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Step 3
Pay attention to the order of your lessons. I found that doing math with my daughter later in the day caused more problems, so we started to work on math first thing in the morning. Children's brains are the sharpest at that time and they also haven't had time to get tired yet.
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Step 4
Do research online for better curricula if that is what you need. I quickly found a home schooling math curriculum from Bob Jones that focused each lesson around a story. The story followed a man named Matt and his beaver Paddy. Since my daughter loves animals she actually began to look forward to doing math each day.
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Step 5
Find out if your child needs to take more breaks. Write out your current schedule on a piece of paper. Now watch your child throughout the day. Is he getting tired after any certain subject? If he is, add a break before his next class. If my daughter has a long language lesson I find that giving her a 10-minute break makes all the difference when we move on to science.
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Step 6
Don't be afraid to take one month and try a different schedule arrangement each week. That will let you see which week gave you the best results. For the rest of the year use the schedule from the week that gave you the best results.
