How to Use Kid's Magazines for Homeschooling

Choosing a kid's magazine for your homeschooled child requires consideration of purpose. Do you want to educate, or simply entertain? Many kid's magazines, such as National Geographic Kids, Ask, and Cobblestone American History magazine provide education and entertainment. Using them in your homeschool lessons is simple.

Monthly Subscription of Kid's Magazines

The fact that kid's magazines are delivered to your door every month makes them perfect for unit study work in your homeschool. Among those homeschoolers who use the unit study method of education, they units often last one month. Adding in other resources from the library or internet homeschooling sites is a great way to enforce the lesson taught in the magazine.

Each magazine usually has two or three different topics in it, although some cover only one. The first thing to do when you receive the magazine in the mail is to determine which stories you will be focusing on.

Preparing a Magazine Unit Study for Homeschool

The main article in the magazine provides your unit study topic. The text article itself is a reading lesson for your child. From this article, pick out five to ten new vocabulary words that your child does not know yet. Your homeschooled child can write these in a vocabulary notebook or on index cards for flashcard use.

Articles in kid's magazines are often accompanied by large photographs, illustrations, charts and graphs. Each one of these can also provide homeschool learning activities. Your homeschooled child can write a description of the picture, analyze the information on the graph, or cut out the pictures to make a lap book or collage.

Kid's magazines often have contests or activities that are to be mailed in to the magazine. These can include everything from pictures to be drawn or colored, to joke answers, essays, or letters to a character in the stories. Take part in these activities with your homeschooled child. Not only will he or she enjoy doing the activity, they can also learn about the postal system, and writing and sending letters.

Using a kid's magazine subscription for homeschooling can do a lot more than provide some interesting reading material for your child. By focusing on the main topic of the magazine issue, and creating an entire unit study from it, your child will be able to study all subjects and their interconnection to the real world. Kid's magazines make homeschooling enjoyable and allow the homeschooling parent to organize the month in an easier fashion.