Young children might prefer themes around things like apples, the zoo, birds, stars, or a favorite author. Whenever you tailor your homeschool lesson plans around a theme, learning becomes a lot more fun and creative.

When you base your homeschool lesson plans on a thematic unit, you will also want to determine how much time you'll need to cover that theme.

You could spend anywhere from a week to a month on the theme, depending on how much your child wants to learn the content. I suggest spending only two weeks at most on one theme.

Blending themes into your homeschool lesson plans isn't difficult at all. Before long, you'll start noticing how much fun you and your child are having by basing your learning around a theme.

You don't necessarily need to integrate every single subject into the thematic unit. You don't even need to do theme-based learning all of the time with your homeschool lesson plans.

Getting your child involved in the planning process is another important idea to keep in mind. Encourage your child to choose some lesson themes.

Giving children choices usually enhances interest in what you are trying to teach. I think it is important to have your child involved as much as possible in all areas of lesson plan preparation.

Let's look at an example to see how using themes in your homeschooling lesson plans would work. For example, if we were to do a thematic unit on apples, we could have a science lesson on how apples grow.

When we do math, we could work on fractions by dividing apples into slices. Learning about Johnny Appleseed could be a lesson for Social Studies. We could study books about apples. For Language Arts, we could write a paragraph about apples.

Using the cut up apple slices from math, we could make apple stamps for an Art lesson. We could also find songs that have lyrics with apples in them. It would even be fun to do some cooking by making applesauce or apple bread.

The essential thing to remember when using theme-based homeschool lesson plans is to integrate some of your child's interests. Using thematic units as an addition to the curriculum that you have already planned can help make learning more enjoyable.