Accredited Homeschool.net 2010 statistics show that homeschooling has been on the rise since 1970, as many parents have found it beneficial in terms of instruction, morals, environment or other personal reasons. Educational suppliers and institutions have responded to this trend by designing curricula and text books that cater to homeschoolers. These ensure that nationwide educational standards will be met through the self-taught lessons provided. Publishers that provide sixth grade math resources for homeschool families include Bob Jones University, A Beka, Calvert Home School and Saxon. Purchase these books by catalog, online or at large bookstores.
If you do not want to rely on a preexisting sixth grade homeschool math curriculum, you can design your own. This implies selecting appropriate themes, ensuring that the lesson plan meets national and state standards and structuring the lessons in a logical manner that helps your child continually build on prior knowledge. In general, parents designing a curriculum for their sixth grade child should include the following themes: review of basic operations, fractions and decimals, introductory algebraic concepts, introductory spatial geometry concepts, probability, proportion and data analysis. Before finalizing the curriculum, you should research your state's educational standards to make sure you include any necessary variations.
An integral math lesson for a sixth grade homeschooler should include an element of theory that can either be explained or self taught, and an element of practice that enables the student to apply the concepts. If you have purchased a ready made curriculum, both the explanation and practice, in addition to activity ideas, will be included in the text book. If you have designed your own curriculum, you either need to teach the theme to your child and provide supplementary materials, such as worksheets or math practice websites, or prepare lesson handouts, breaking down the concepts into simpler ideas that a sixth grader can learn without explanation. Find many worksheets online for free by searching for sixth grade math worksheets. If you design your own, make sure you include problems of varying complexity regarding the theme, and problems that require your child to combine the current with previous themes. Practice should also combine computational problems with word problems.
Supplementary activities should also be an integral component of the curriculum. They help children reinforce the concepts they learn and retain them better. Children studying at home have the advantage of utilizing a wide range of objects in their activities. Using household items makes the concepts more interesting and helps the child see how math applies to real life. For example, you could use a cake to teach proportions, or a bag of different colored candies to help your child learn about probability. Fold sheets, blankets or towels to teach geometry lessons. Use other objects as counters, or to represent variables in algebraic equations.