Homeschooling Multiple Children: 3 Overlooked Tips that Really Help
If you’ve been around my podcast or my website for any length of time, you know I homeschooled multiple children from preschool through high school graduation. One by one they each started school until I had all 4 children doing lessons every day. It was not always perfect or smooth sailing, but I learned as I went along. Eventually, I figured out the right rhythm for my family. It might take some time, but you can do it too.
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Homeschooling Multiple Children: The Early Years
Before I give you my tips for homeschooling several children at the same time, I want to give you a clear picture of the time it takes to homeschool a child at each grade level. In the beginning, you will be doing all the teaching. This would mainly be for children in grades K – 2nd grade. You would be doing all the teaching since most of the time, these children cannot yet read, so you need to instruct them. However, it does not mean that it takes a lot of time out of your day.
Homeschooling children in kindergarten through 2nd grade only takes about 1.5 to 2 hours each day. I know this may sound crazy, but it’s true, and I’ve done it with 4 children.
I do want to make it clear that when I say it only takes 1.5 to 2 hours, I am referring to when the parent is teaching the child. If you are using an online curriculum where the child is watching lessons and doing work, that may take longer. Sometimes these types of curricula can seem to last as long as a regular school day.
“So, why are children in school all day if it only takes two hours to teach them?” you ask.
Good question. I attended public school, and I remember playing with all the blocks and other toys in kindergarten, and I only went for half a day. I mention that to let you know that it doesn’t need to be longer. My kindergarten days were only about 3 to 3.5 hours long and we played during that time. We also had snack time and story time. It wasn’t all lessons.
3rd grade seems to be where school starts taking a little longer, and of course it just goes up from there as the workload increases and the number of subjects being taught increases as well.
Tip #1 for Homeschooling Multiple Children at the Same time
The First tip is to start training your children as early as possible to take responsibility for their own learning or education. Of course, they can’t very well do this until they can read well, but I wanted to mention it now, so you can have it in the back of your mind as your children get older and are able to do this.
I believe Charlotte Mason said, “All education is self-education.” Another version is, “There is no education but self-education.” This simply means that a person’s mind needs to be engaged to truly learn. It can’t happen outside of that person. We need to train our children to learn for themselves.
What I mean by all of this is that your children should eventually be able to teach themselves their lessons. It might not be all their lessons, but it should be enough to take some of the weight off of you in the later school years. They should be doing much of their own work by 6th grade.
Let me give you an example of what this would look like. My daughter would watch a math lesson on the computer. Next, she would attempt to do the problems in that lesson on her own. If, after a couple of tries, she still wasn’t understanding the lesson, I might have to help her, but only after she tried on her own first. It’s the same if the child is reading instructions in a math book. They would read the instructions and look over the sample problems and attempt the work. Now they might not always understand it, but they should at least attempt it. They should at least try on their own. They should also be able to read their history assignments and answer the questions or complete the assignments, etc.
Have you heard of the Robinson curriculum? Art Robinson is a scientist who homeschooled his children after the passing of his wife. He taught his children to do their lessons from an early age. It’s quite a remarkable story and is the extreme of what I am writing about, but I encourage you to read about it if you doubt your children can do their own work. Click here to read about the Robinson Curriculum.
Tip #2 for Homeschooling Multiple Children at the Same time
The second tip is to teach children who are close in age/grade together. I have done this with many subjects including grammar, history, science, art, gym class, health, bible, etc. Sometimes I was able to teach all 4 of my children together in subjects such as bible, art, and gym. We did history for a few years together as well.
My 2 oldest children were 2 years apart and my 2 youngest children were 18 months apart. This kind of gave me a natural break. I could do some things together with the older two and then some things together with the younger two. Instead of teaching Language arts for 4 different grades, I would only do it for 2.
It can be a little tricky to figure this out if you’re not sure which grade level to use, but so much of certain subjects is just retaught every year that it really doesn’t matter until your children get into higher middle school to high school grades, but by then they should be working mostly on their own.
Tip #3 for Homeschooling Multiple Children at the Same time
My third and final tip would be to purchase curricula such as unit studies where you can teach everyone together but then assign work and projects at the appropriate level for each child. So, you would teach the lesson once to everyone, but each child would have an assignment or project at their grade level. One curriculum I know of and have used that provides this is The Mystery of History. This is a history curriculum, of course, and I have no affiliation with them. As a matter of fact, my next blog will be a review of this very curriculum, so come back and read that next week.
There are a ton of unit study type homeschool curricula that are very good. Some are geared toward certain grade levels, but you, the parent, can ultimately decide what is best for your children.
Do an internet search for Unit studies and start researching if you think it sounds like something you would like to try. There are so many great ones out there. I have a few honorable mentions that I have reviewed here on the blog.
Learning Adventures Read my review here.
Christian Cottage Unit Studies – I have not yet written a review but will in the future.
Sonlight — not techically a unit study but the history can be used with multiple grades. Read my review here.
Summing it Up- How to Homeschool Multiple Children at the Same Time
- Teach your children to be responsible for their own learning as early as possible. This will be a big help later to you and to them for the rest of their lives.
- Teach children together who are close in age and/or grade any subjects that you can.
- Find a unit study that provides lessons for all grade levels, so you can teach everyone together at the same time.
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Wishing you all the best in your homeschool journey!
~Mary
“…And the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning.” ~Prov. 16:31