Episode 69: Skills Versus Content

Layers of Learning Podcast

The Layers of Learning Podcast with Karen and Michelle is here to help you get your whole family learning together in your homeschool. We are the sisters behind Layers of Learning. We love getting together to chat about homeschooling and this podcast is just a series of our chats. We’re inviting you to listen in on our conversations.

We both have big families, but we teach almost all of our school subjects to everyone at once. We want to help you find the joy in that too, so we talk a lot about family homeschooling. To see all of our episodes, visit our Layers of Learning Podcast Page. Join us as we explore how to have a happy, hands-on, family-style homeschool.

Skills Versus Content

There are two types of knowledge you are teaching your kids in your homeschool – skills and content. A lot of homeschool parents worry about covering everything; they stress over missing something in their kids’ educations. Most often, what they are worrying about is content. They don’t want to miss teaching the Korean War and they worry that if they don’t learn every fact about the Periodic Table of Elements, their kids will be stunted. They are afraid of failing as a homeschool parent if they miss something. The key though, is understanding that if you teach your kids the skills, they can learn ANY content. You don’t have to teach everything!

During this podcast, we’ll walk you through the skills you can teach your kids that will help them to become lifelong learners. Mathematics, writing, reading, spelling, thinking, analyzing, communicating, creativity, and much, much more are all learning skills. You can master them by applying the skills to whatever content you’re learning about.

Here Are A Few Topics You’ll Hear About In This Podcast

• As you learn content, you can build your skills. The content provides the interest, but the skills are built as you learn about it. You might be learning chronological order as you build a timeline in your Book of Years or analyzing analogies as you write an animal report.
• As you finish each unit, think about not only the content from the unit, but about the skills you developed. For example, you might
• Note taking, memorization, writing outlines, measuring, comparing & contrasting, questioning – all of these skills can apply to any subject and can be used for any content knowledge.
• There is no master list of content you must master, but it is important to have a broad knowledge of the world.
• You can compare, write, analyze, think, write, converse, and truly understand so much once you have a basic cultural and global literacy about all kinds of content knowledge.
• Once you become aware of the differences between content knowledge and skills, you will be equipped to help your kids truly learn by dovetailing both of these in meaningful ways.

The post Episode 69: Skills Versus Content appeared first on Layers of Learning.