One of the neatest things about homeschooling is being able to choose our own curriculums and programs. Though I realize it is so important to make sure that children get a well-rounded education, I also know that there is a precious amount of value to be found in the creative liberty that homeschoolers have when it comes to choosing electives and study programs. With that said, it can also be hard to know what all of our electives options are since the possibilities are nearly endless!
In this post, we will discuss 8 different ideas for electives that you could incorporate into your homeschooling curriculum!
1. Cooking/baking
Cooking is an essential part of life (baking could also be considered essential…maybe!). With that in mind, I think it can be very helpful to consider learning how to cook and bake as a part of our homeschooling routines and curriculum.
If you wanted to bring structure to the learning, it can be really neat to purchase a cookbook from a creator that you trust and simply have your child make each recipe in the book. By doing that, your child will likely gain experience with a wider variety of recipes/dishes while learning many different unique cooking and baking techniques.
It may be neat to search for a specific kind of cookbook whether that be one that is for a certain diet such as Keto or Trim Healthy Mama, or even one that is exclusively for crock pot recipes. There are many different resources for cooking/baking electives!
2. Homemaking
Next up as one of our electives options is homemaking. The other day, I was listening to a podcast by Leah Lovero entitled “The Heart of Homeschooling.” She was talking about how she realized that one of the best ways for her to teach her kids how to do basic life things such as cleaning, yardwork, and other chores was to make those things a part of her homeschooling rather than an afterthought. It was in her episode entitled “Getting Your Kids To Love Your Homeschool: Part 3” that she said,
…I wasn’t ever teaching the kids how to do the chores. I had this idea in my mind that like one day I was going to be doing the dishes and it would just be the perfect time to bring a child over to me and say, “Let me teach you, child,” as I’m doing it, “how to put the dishes in the dishwasher the right way and how to unload the dishwasher the right way.” And, guess what?…the opportunity never magically appeared because I was always just trying to get the dishes done…
– Leah Lovero
She continued to talk about how making homemaking an actual part of their homeschooling enabled her to be intentional about how she was teaching her kids to be responsible with their chores at home.
3. Exercise
This electives choice is fairly self-explanatory, but I think it is worth noting that exercise has many different forms. I do think it is important to incorporate some form of physical activity into your homeschooling. Some options could be simply walking/running outdoors or on a treadmill, yoga, some form of HIIT classes (there are so many free options online), strength training/cardio, or even various sports. It is simply important to get our bodies up and moving especially if our tendency is to sit at a desk all day while we do our book work!
4. Knitting, crocheting, or sewing
Though it is a dying art, making things with our hands through techniques such as knitting, crocheting, sewing, or even cross-stitching can be very fun activities that do not involve any sort of screen time. There are so many different resources out there, and many of them are free! My friend Lauren Brown has a site called Daisy Cottage Designs where she offers many different free crochet patterns (one is pictured below!).
5. Gardening
Working with our hands in the sunshine can be such a healthy activity in a world that is saturated with TV and other forms of screen time, not to mention that homeschooling often requires families to spend a lot of time in front of prerecorded classes or books. With that in mind, gardening as one of our electives choices is another great option.
Once again, there are many free resources online that can help us learn the basics of gardening. I believe that learning how to effectively grow things ourselves can also be good financially as well as physically since eating things we have grown in our personal gardens is a healthier choice of food than other much more processed food options that we would find at the grocery stores.
6. Music
The next elective we will discuss is music. This option is near to my heart since music has been a predominant part of my life for many years. In 2012, my family and I began traveling to different churches as a Bluegrass Gospel family band and did so until I got married in 2020. I loved singing and played the fiddle for our band. Music is such a powerful tool especially in the ministry since people will likely listen to a song that gives them the Gospel even if they would not be receptive to the message in another form.
I believe there is so much value in teaching children music from a young age, and either learning to sing or to play some musical instrument makes for a wonderful elective choice in our homeschooling curriculums!
7. Art
There are once again many different options for this elective. I am not artistic at all, but my mom is along with one of my brothers. As a fun elective, it would be neat to incorporate some form of art such as watercolor, sketching, or charcoal. To do that, I think purchasing some kind of course or book would be a great place to start.
8. Foreign languages
Last but not least is learning foreign languages. Once again, there are so many options with this electives choice! Not only are there so many different languages you could incorporate into your homeschooling, there are also many different programs you could use. If you are interested in American Sign Language as a really fun foreign language option, I would definitely recommend Sign Language for Everyone by Cathy Rice since it comes as a book or course depending on which option you choose. The link below is for the book by itself.
Other programs that can be used in your homeschooling curriculum to help your kids learn foreign languages would be Rosetta Stone and Duolingo. Rosetta Stone does cost money, but the basic version of Duolingo is free and can be a great resource! The main downside, in my opinion, for Rosetta Stone would be its price point. For Duolingo, the negative point would be the fact that it is hard to show evidence of the work completed through the program if you want to create an actual official report card for the program in order to have more complete records in your homeschooling. It is not impossible to create your own report card to demonstrate your child’s progress, but it may be necessary to be a little bit diligent and creative.
With that said, Rosetta Stone does an amazing job of using “emersion,” as they would say, as their way of teaching. They focus on helping their students learn the languages through context clues and observation. They actually offer subscriptions on their website to many of their language courses (linked here), or you can purchase courses individually for a one-time price on Amazon. As probably the most cost-effective option, you can actually purchase life-time access to all 24 of their language courses for $179 on their website (linked here). I think this option could be great for families who may have several children who will be using the program through the years especially if those children will want to learn different languages. To fully understand their offers, I recommend checking out their website!
On the other hand, Duolingo takes a more traditional approach to teaching while incorporating many fun and entertaining means of learning. I encourage you to take a look at Duolingo’s site linked below if you are interested!
Click here or the picture below to be taken to Duolingo’s website:
There you have it: eight different electives options for your homeschooling curriculum! Growing up, the electives we mainly focused on were exercise, music, and foreign languages. My brothers and I actually used all three of the resources I linked for the foreign languages and enjoyed each of them. I sincerely hope that this post is a helpful resource to you as you seek to ever improve your homeschooling journey.
Do you have any other suggestions for electives?
What electives do you use in your homeschooling?
I would love to hear from you in the comments below!
Until next time
