How to Adapt Lesson Plans for Multiple Ages

 Greetings from the Om-School! Teacher Omi (grama) has been lucky to spend more time with the grandkids lately and it's got me thinking again how important it is, not just in homeschool, but in any educational setting to tailor lesson plans to various ages and ability levels. Two things you want to avoid when doing activities with kids is boredom and planned failure. And activities that are geared to young or too old will cause both of those. But age-flexible lesson plans will automatically provide the opposite: engagement and success. 

I know you may be thinking, but I don't have time to create separate lesson plans for every age or ability level that I'm teaching. Good news! You don't have to. Here's how to adapt lesson plans for multiple ages. You may have noticed that the lesson plans on this blog are flexible to fit many ages. That's because I want them to be user-friendly for you as the teacher but also for the students who even if they are all the same age, are variable in skill levels. 

The key to age-flexible lesson plans is breaking down the activities and steps involved and then let each child do the part he can have most success with. I'm thinking especially of craft projects here. Too often, children fear crafts because we adults make kids think they have to be done a certain way to "look right." The child fears that he is doing his wrong or that it doesn't look as good as someone else's.

For example, on our recent vacay to visit our six grandkids we made plaster sand molds with them. Children range from baby to age 8. Moses and Silas, the 8-year-olds, could follow the directions to mix up plaster, configure the molds and create their designs. So they were project managers. This gave them a great feeling of success. 

6-year-old Lola was able to follow the directions the boys gave but needed an active duty, to stay engaged. She was the materials coordinator, counting out and distributing what each person would need. 4-year-old Lucian was less interested in the actual craft project part, than he was in the sand play. So we gave him some decorations to place in his mold and then a tub of sand, shells, water and a scrub brush, to explore to his heart's content. 

We helped 2-year-old Ezra and baby Remus make quick hand print molds and let them spend the majority of the time exploring. Ez and Lu built sand castles and had fun burying, digging up and then scrubbing their shells. Baby Remus got some large clean shells to explore. When everyone was done, the big kids joined the littles in seashell exploration.

Everyone got from the project exactly what he or she needed. When focus of an activity is on everyone making a cookie cutter project in the same way, children feel a lot more frustration, boredom and failure. When each is allowed to engage with materials as he feels comfortable, regardless of what the final project looks like, or if, indeed a project is even made, the outcome is authentic learning, success and enjoyment.