Continuing with the homeschooling posts, I’m seeing lots and lots of questions online about how parents homeschool children of multiple ages.  While I don’t have all the answers and our homeschool habits are far from perfect, I wanted to share what generally works for our family.  My hope is that maybe readers can adapt some of these ideas to suite their own family’s needs.

EMPOWERING TO THRIVE

First and foremost, I do my best to support my students to thrive at home.  As a parent trainer and health coach, I am all too aware of how essential it is that my kids have a wholistic environment in which to learn.  Wholesome nutrition, restorative sleep, positive body movement, time in nature, and mindfulness practices, as well as fostering connection and limiting stressors, are some of the basic principles that I do my best to maintain at home.  Restorative sleep, especially, is simply not negotiable.  Read more about how we try to create space to thrive HERE.

CURRICULA

Moving on to curricula, history and science are the same for everyone in my family in grades K-8.  Likewise, art and music have been joint in the past also.  Homeschooling high school is it’s own beast and mostly independent, and therefore not included in my joint curricula choices.  Using the same curricula across K-8 schooling really streamlines my homeschooling efforts and simply makes life easier.  I accomplish this by using the same material for a subject, but assigning age/developmentally-appropriate follow up tasks.

For example, if we’re studying the Ancients in history (which we are for the upcoming school year), the weekly text is always the same for everyone.  However, the assignments based on that reading will differ significantly.  While my younger elementary students will draw or color a page that relates to the reading, my older elementary students will answer a few straightforward reading comprehension questions, and my middle school students will answer more complex reading comprehension/thinking questions, as well as write an essay here and there.  Additionally, my older students are sometimes assigned additional research or writing topics in an area of related interest.

Likewise, complementary reading assignments differ based on age/ability.  So while my younger students may have a picture book read aloud to them, my independent readers are assigned a correlating chapter book to read on their own, based on their reading level.  Or in some cases (especially when all students are younger), I may read a book aloud to everyone, regardless of age.

For science lessons, everyone participates in experiments or activities, but I involve the older students more in preparing and thinking through the experiment, as well as documenting hypotheses, processes, and results with lab sheets.  I also assign additional complementary research projects to older students that I do not assign to younger students.

By using the same curricula for multiple ages, I lessen my workload and encourage the children to work together.

SCHEDULING

Scheduling can get a bit complicated, but this method works pretty well for us.  Of course there are many, many ways to create a schedule, but this is a loose idea of what we’ll use for the 2020-2021 school year.

Daily Homeschool Schedule

It’s important to note that my children are trained to be self-starters who are fairly independent in their work.  They’ll complete as much work as they can do on their own, saving the assignments/lessons that need to be completed with me, and holding questions until I work with them individually.  We work toward independence from the beginning, so I scaffold only as much as is necessary to empower them.  Even my youngest son, who needs lots of one-on-one attention because of his special needs, can complete some of his work independently.

Having said that, there are plenty of interruptions throughout the day and it’s not always smooth sailing.  We’re a normal family just like everyone else and there are many times I need to break up a fight or settle a dispute or put a band-aid on someone … or hide in the bathroom with a piece of chocolate.  It’s real life, friends, so don’t mistake the posted schedule for perfection!  My personal goal, though, is to try to achieve close-to-total independence by late middle school, with the hope that they’ll become adults who have developed the skill to teach themselves anything they want to learn.

Also worth noting is that I typically do not micromanage all assigned material for my older students – I let them know what needs to be completed each week, and they decide how and in what order to get it finished.  I do, however, manage every daily assignment for my youngest son because he needs the oversight.  I make sure to offer him choices for the order in which assignments are completed though, helping him develop the skill of deciding for himself.  We do not keep a set schedule for subjects – my students decide on their own how to work best.  Scaffolding as necessary, I slowly move to as much independence as possible for each student, so they can learn to manage their own time.

WORK SPACE

We do have a beautiful school room, but I removed three of the desks and rearranged when we decided to send the older three children to school in January.  Silly me!  I still use the space for my youngest son, but the older children have desks in their rooms where they now work.  They’ve found it to be more ideal, offering a quiet, distraction-free environment in which to work.  But also, sometimes we’re all gathered around the kitchen table or a student sits at my desk for a tutoring session.  We work all over the house.  I have diffusers available in every room, so we are empowered to get individualized emotional support whenever we need.  I found myself consistently diffusing THIS combination during quarantine schooling, but there are dozens of good choices to support a thriving learning environment.

I know families have so many different setups, there truly is no perfect space in which to homeschool.  The bottom line?  Do what works best for your family.

THE JUGGLING ACT

For me, homeschooling students of multiple ages and abilities truly is a juggling act.  It can feel a little crazy at times, but it’s a beautiful, worthwhile kind of crazy, filled with lots of wonderful moments.  Sticking to some semblance of a schedule keeps me on track.  Otherwise, it’s all too easy for me to get involved in blogging or emails or work or home projects, completely neglecting school work.  Though I do steal a few minutes here and there to put a load of laundry in the washer, start the crock pot for dinner, or load the dishwasher, I try to stay as consistent as I can.  Blocking the morning time for school assignments, as much as possible, sets us all up for success.