Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Does the news seem boring to your children? Mike Smith suggests some ideas for incorporating other subjects in your study of current events on today's Home School Heartbeat.

Mike Smith:
One of the great things about home education is that it enables us to demonstrate to our children the interconnectedness of what they are learning to life. Subjects aren't studied in a vacuum-and this can be true of your study of current events as well.


News articles may have words your child is not familiar with. Try having your student write down all those big words in a notebook, and then look them up in the dictionary. Later you can quiz him on his new vocabulary.


Current events can be a great springboard to learning geography. Try picking out some new items from a newspaper or news-focused website. Then have your children find on a map the city or country where the story took place.


If you have older students, you might let them try their hand at writing their own newspaper. There are many inexpensive computer programs out there that can help children do this. You can assign them a fixed number of pages and a deadline to meet for the project. That way they can get a feel for what it's like to work to deadlines, and come up with the right number of articles to fill the available space.


With a little planning, parents can make learning about the news fun for their children. A good understanding of current events is a practical skill that will serve your children well when they become adults. And until next time, I'm Mike Smith.