This is our fourth year homeschooling, and my first year homeschooling two kids… with a baby. Our school approach is ever evolving and growing, but I feel like we have enough figured out that sharing our take on it could be helpful to other homeschoolers trying to find their groove. I will say, homeschooling multiple children can be tricky, add in a baby and you take it to another level. With a little planning and a lot of flexibility it is doable.
Up until this year we have simply followed my son’s lead and I worked learning into his interests. If he’s into dinosaurs, we read all the dinosaur books, draw dinosaurs, even do dino math (thank you online worksheets). When he changes interests, we switch gears. Last year was all about Harry Potter, which easily relates to all subjects by the way. I call it relaxed eclectic homeschooling. It’s worked well so far, and most importantly he’s stayed curious.
This year I felt like I had to switch things up a bit.
I am now (officially) responsible for teaching two kids with different interests, and only have so much time in a day. I thought I’m going to structure our learning, stick to a curriculum and its going to be great. Yeah, that didn’t last long at all. There was nothing wrong with our curriculum, I actually really like it, but teaching two completely different things to each kid everyday was not working for us.
A few weeks into the school year I listened to a podcast (I wish I remembered which one) talking about homeschooling multiple children. She talked on teaching mostly the same things to all your kids and then just adjusting their work to the level they are at. This was exactly what I needed to hear at the time. So, I grabbed my stack-o-curriculum and decided to pick one and adapt it to both kids. I also decided to use the curriculum very loosely, more like a guide, or idea book.
We still head off on tangents and end up studying the moon phases instead of animal classification, and that’s okay.
There are things like math that obviously need to be taught separately because they are at completely different levels, but there are ways to practice math together too, like in baking or counting money. Math is also necessary in so many board and card games, you could play games all day and they would have no idea they are learning.
Halfway through the school year I decided that our math choice just wasn’t working for my oldest, so we switched to something new and started over. That’s the beauty of homeschooling, when something isn’t working we have the freedom to pivot. I shared some of my favorite homeschool resources here.
What does homeschooling multiple children actually look like?
Here’s how I plan it out. At the beginning of the year I decided what I wanted to cover and chose curriculum, books and workbooks to support that. I also figured out if there were any special projects we should take on based on my kids interests and gathered the supplies. I am a big fan of letting the kids be creative and so I make sure to stock up on all the art supplies.
Now with everything ready and planned, I accept that things won’t go as planned and am ready to switch things up as we go along or go down a rabbit trail and spend twice as long on a subject than I thought we would.
It’s nice to have a structure to fall back on yet still have the freedom to follow our curiosities.
Every month I have a general idea of what we want to focus on and I request library books to support that. I usually look at what holidays are coming up, if the season is changing, or if we have something like a trip coming up that we want to focus our learning on. Sometimes we stumble upon a book that takes us down a path that was not on our radar, and end up completely shifting our focus. Thank goodness for the Library! I don’t know how we would get by without our rotating stack of library books.
Weekly I try and cover something from each subject, there are times where we don’t hit them all, and it’s okay. A lot of the time you can mix multiple subjects into one lesson, book or activity. We also have a homeschool co-op weekly that is mostly about getting together and having fun with some activities sprinkled in here and there.
We read every day, both together and individually. We also usually do math, handwriting or copy work and something creative like drawing or an art project most days.
Right now, with a baby in the house, we usually sit down for 20- 30 minute blocks and focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes ‘school’ is done in an hour, and sometimes it is broken up throughout the day. This is the sit down and work type of learning, but really they are learning all day.
I actually find that they do their best learning when they are playing, or trying to figure out something on their own.
We listen to a lot of audiobooks together (thank you audible) and I’ve stocked our shelves with educational games that (for the most part) we can all play together. I love the learning games because they usually don’t realize its educational and they just want to play.
I think the biggest sanity saver for us is outside time. Everyone feels better when we are outside. There is also a lot of learning to do out in the garden, by the pond, or walking down to the park.
Our days don’t follow a strict schedule, but they do have a nice rhythm that changes with every season and with the ever shifting nap times. This is what works for us now, I’m sure it will change many more times through our homeschool journey.
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