There are so many benefits to using Google Classroom in your homeschool. It is a relatively easy way to share lessons with your kids. It’s an easy way to plan lessons and to save lessons for other years for other learners as they move up into higher grades.
How to Use Google Classroom in your Homeschool
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If your kids are like mine, they love to use technology. They love using the computer, or their tablets, if doesn’t seem to matter what they are doing.
Planning & Scheduling Lessons in Google Classroom
Whether you are a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, or a working homeschooling mom, having all our lessons in one place can be a time and energy saver.
You can create your classroom full of lessons for the day or the week, or even the whole year if you’d like. You can sit down and do your planning, your scheduling for each lesson, for each subject at one time. Maybe you can use this to always be one step ahead.
Then you can schedule when your child is supposed to do the work, and when the work is due to be finished.
Bonus: Reuse these lessons for younger children/students later on.
Link to Other Content
You can link to others, outside content if you’d like. You have the ability to link to YouTube videos and other websites for each lesson that you create. No more having a list of bookmarks and hoping that your child uses the right one.
Testing
Google Classroom allows you to create open-ended, or multiple choice questions in their testing feature.
Use Google Classroom for Your Homeschool to Budget
This is a great way to stretch your homeschool budget. Digital products in general are a great way to stretch your budget, as they tend to be lower-priced, and you can reuse the material.
Track Your Child’s Progress
You can see when your child has last been active in the classroom. You can set dates for when you child can work on an assignment, but you can also set a due date for assignments. There is also the option to reduce the last-minute rush to complete assignments by sending reminders in the days prior to the due date.
Google Classroom also makes keeping track of grades a breeze. This is especially handy if you need to report to a school board, or for creating a transcript.
Complete Customization
All your lessons are able to be completely customized to your needs and wants. We are able to add images to the lessons, whether they are for writing prompts, or as examples, or just to add a pop of color and fun and interest to your lessons.
Create your own class header image, similar to Facebook header/cover images to make each class have its own look.
Google Classroom gives you the ability to create a digital curriculum of your own. Or to add a digital element to your print curriculum. You can create these lessons once, and have them set up for future use.
More Information and Tips on Google Classroom
5 Beginner Tips for Google Classroom
How to Set up Google Classroom for Homeschool – Step by step setting up Google Classroom for Homeschool
Chrome Extensions for Google Classroom Planning
Alternate Sites to Google Classroom
Setting Up Google Classroom for Your Kids
Setting up your child on Google Classroom is easier than it might seem. They will need a Gmail account (email) but that is easy to set up, and you don’t have to let them have access to it for anything other than school.
Once your child is in the classroom, they can use this code to join the class. OR You can invite/add them to the class, in this setting:
The ability to use your Google Drive account, and all the Google suite including Google Slides, Google Sheets, etc, is a bonus. You can create slide shows, buy slideshows for your children, or have them create their own.
There are so many different ways to use Google Classroom in your homeschool. Homeschool parents can be resourceful and this is just another tool to use, and make work for your homeschool. At no cost to you.
This is all available to you to use for free. It does have a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really quite easy to use and can save you time in the long run.