Jennifer asks:
“I am a homeschooling mom of a fourth and second grader. I know that you work mainly with the high school age, but I was hoping you could answer a question for me. I have read your information on Occupational Education. As a teacher of grade school students, do you know if it is necessary for one to incorporate Occupational Education? I know it is one of the eleven required subjects for Washington, but am unsure if I need to teach this in the younger grades. Any information you have would be helpful.”
Hi Jennifer,
The 11 required subjects in WA state are to be completed at any time between K and 12th. That’s why we don’t necessarily have to cover spelling in 12th grade, and we don’t necessarily have to cover occupational education in 3rd grade. Besides that, EVERYTHING you teach your kids in 2nd and 4th grade is occupational, right? Because it’s all reading, writing, and math – gotta love that in the work force! What I tell my clients in high school is that they can just wait until their teens have a job. At some point, teens WANT a job because they want money. Once that happens, count hours and experiences of the job, and voila! Occupational education! It sounds like an intimidating course, but it’s really the easiest of all.
I hope that helps!
Check out my page on recommended homeschool resources. I’ve got links from each selection directly to Amazon, for your convenience.
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Christianbook.com Curriculum Page
J W says:
Jennifer,
I second what Lee says, but I do find tons of occupational education anyway. Here are some things I’ve counted as occupational education for my grade schoolers. The beauty part is at this stage, I planned very little of this – we just had the opportunities and ran with them. My list is heavy on the home-ec side, but you get the idea:
1) A 4-hour toilet repair
Watching workmen remove a tree and discussing safety precautions
2) Taking care of horses at camp
3) Making a rag doll
4) Any and all cooking, baking, etc.
5) Knitting and crocheting
6) Teaching others to knit
7) Entering knitted and crocheted items in the state fair competitions
9) Learning .html programming to build a simple web page
10) Helping to change a car tire
11) Learning about tools and assisting with the assembly of a geodesic dome for playing on in the back yard
12) Interviewing a candidate for a political office about his future job also counts as social studies.
August 24th, 2008 at 12:51 pm