What is interest-led learning?

Interest-led learning is a concept that has unschooling-style roots, but simply means allowing a child to be the dominant leader in their learning experiences. It doesn’t mean they are in control of every aspect; however, their input has a lot to do with the concepts and lessons that are taught.

Through this approach, the parent takes more of the facilitator role versus the director role. This can be hard to do if you feel the need to control your child’s educational journey. Even the most controlling parents have seen benefits in allowing their children to take the learning reigns more often than not. I know, because I’m one of those parents.

Benefits of Interest-Led Learning

I wanted to start this post off with defining interest-led learning because that is the glue to making homeschooling according to your child’s interests stick. Fostering this type of learning environment is beneficial in some of the following ways:

• Intellectual, social, and emotional development are naturally enhanced.
• Children are more likely to have pleasant learning experiences.
• They are more motivated to learn in an organic (rather than forceful) way.
• It reduces the need for rushed timelines and unrealistic milestones.
• Subjects can be explored on deeper levels.
• Children can become experts in a particular subject/topic over time.

What interest-led learning is NOT.

Before continuing, we need to address what interest-led learning is not. For starters, interest-led learning is not school-at-home. It is also not structure-less. Most people look at interest-led learning as a lazy approach to home education with format built around no learning structure whatsoever, and this simply isn’t true.

Interest-led learning is also not an all-inclusive homeschooling method. While other styles and methods require particular curriculum, schedules, and the like, interest-led learning gives you the liberty to choose whether or not you want to use specific textbooks, lessons, or supplements.

How to Homeschool According to Your Child’s Interests

Regardless of what you want to call it, homeschooling according to your child’s interests can be seen as:

• delight-directed learning
• child-led learning
• life learning
• interest-led learning

In a nutshell, it can be seen as homeschooling outside the box.

Take notes.

One of the first things you’ll want to get used to doing with interest-led learning is taking notes. Your notes should consist of what your child is genuinely curious about, what they enjoy doing, and what they are naturally drawn to. The answers to these questions are going to become lesson plans used to help your child pursue a holistic education wrapped around their interests.

Create loose plans.

I say “loose” plans because things can always change at any given moment. And they should, at least as long as it’s for the benefit of the child. Having strict, concrete plans can often lead to stress and overwhelm both for you and your homeschoolers. So, use the interest-led approach to create your lesson plans one month, one week, or even one day at a time.

Gather resources.

Another cool thing about the interest-led learning approach is the plethora of resources you can use. Instead of tailoring your child’s education to a particular curriculum, you get to do the opposite and tailor the curriculum to your child’s interests. Many of us interest-led teachers use resources such as:

• Books (think store bought, library, or books purchased online)
• Workbooks
• Online Media (YouTube, PBS Kids, free courses, movies, etc.)
• Local Businesses (these make some pretty cool field trips)
• Hands-on Learning

Foster accountability and progressive learning.

I’ve already mentioned that interest-led doesn’t mean the child gets to do everything. There is still lots for you, the parent-teacher, to do as well. It’s important to foster accountability so your child can understand the importance behind learning, but without being forced. I also believe interest-led provides the unique opportunity to instill progressive learning. This simply means giving your child more space and opportunity to dive in deeper into particular topics, concepts, and subjects. 

What does it actually look like to homeschool according to your child’s interests?

Now that we’ve discussed the how-to, let’s look at the what. Using the example of a child interested in all things volcanoes. This is what one of my homeschool mama friends did.

Daily lesson plans consisted of for several weeks:

• Reading books about volcanoes. She would also use those books for learning to read (identifying sight words, sounding out words, and learning new words). And, those books were also used for spelling words and copywork.
• We watched educational videos and documentaries on YouTube.
• She (and her siblings) also played volcano-related games and did P.E. with the music and movement song called The Floor is Lava.
• We plotted locations and distances between volcanoes all over the world. She also was able to learn about depth and width as it pertains to a volcanoes different sizes and shapes.
• There’s a website that monitors active volcanoes and she was able to see the data in real time.
• She and her siblings created interactive lapbooks, kept a volcano journal, and wrote (or dictated) short stories and poems.
• We all had a blast making a model volcano and watching it erupt (and in different colors).
• They also learned scientific terminology.

As you can see, every major subject was covered in the different lessons done with volcanoes. And it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to cover simple concepts. If they wanted to keep going, do it. When they wanted to stop, stop.

What if your teen is interested in starting a business?

• Find books written by entrepreneurs and how they got started. Link to entrepreneur post
• Watched educational videos and documentaries on YouTube.
• Have them interview or shadow a successfully entrepreneur friend or acquaintance
• Let them start a business and learn from the experience?

Find out how I homeschooled my entrepreneur son in this post.

The same was done for my other homeschoolers as well. I’ve found that each one became inadvertently interested in what the other wanted to learn about, which makes for interesting learning times!

Turn your teens interests into high school credit! Create a tailor made course for them