Have you been hearing about a way to homeschool multiple children at the same time? Are thinking that sounds too good to be true, but curious to learn more? Let me tell you, not only is it possible, but it’s SO MUCH MORE FUN for everyone involved, and the kids can actually learn way more! In this post you’ll discover 4 tips for homeschooling kid’s in multiple grades at the same time. But first, my personal story….Also, if you are in a hurry and want an open and go plan just skip to tip #4 below.
Intro
Before I discovered these 4 tips for homeschooling kids in multiple grades at the same time our homeschool wasn’t thriving. When we started homeschooling I knew I didn’t want to use the same books I was raised on (both my husband and I were homeschooled) because I remembered how they bored me to death and some of them I just didn’t get. So I started my kids out using a different curriculum, but what I didn’t realize is that what I was brought up on were simply traditional textbooks-and what I had chosen for my children was practically the same thing.
I was only homeschooling two children at the time, one was ADHD and the other enjoyed academics until it became “formal” and we began using textbooks. I also had a baby-and then came another baby. I was spending all my time grading when I wasn’t teaching.
Each child had multiple books for each subject, complete with tests. They hated them. What’s worse is they consistently got D’s and F’s. I don’t want to mention the curriculum we were using because perhaps it could work for some children, but everything from the writing style to the layout confused my kids and there were even times I had trouble understanding what was to be accomplished due to what I felt were very poor descriptions.
All in all, our homeschool was dismal and I was running myself into the ground between teaching, grading, reteaching (because they didn’t get the lessons), and worrying.
Eventually, I realized it could possibly be the curriculum we were using. So I started researching. In order to re-ignight my children’s natural curiosity and desire to learn, I initially went with my gut and started using delight directed learning and libraries. It worked! That was the year my oldest son (7) learned how to start using YouTube to research topics of interest (with my supervision). For science that year he taught himself all about frogs and built a frog aquarium. From there he learned that he could research area’s of interest which seemed to excite him.
Meanwhile, I started searching for a better way than textbooks, and eventually I found out about picking a homeschool style that fit my family, as well as how to teach to learning styles, and much later I learned about curriculum’s like My Fathers World (more on that below).
Discover 4 Tips For Homeschooling Kid’s in Multiple Grades At The Same Time.
Eventually I discovered these 4 tips below, and over the years I’ve refined them. So here goes…..
1. Let go of textbooks for everything.
They are good for some things. Regular textbooks like what most of us are familiar with are actually not the best for teaching everything for all kids. The problem with most textbooks is they are dry, and they were created less for truly educating and sparking interests, and more for easy distribution, easy teaching for schools, plus easy grading. We only use them for math and partially for grammar/English arts (we use more than just textbooks for both though). They will work great for your solitary learners, not so great for the rest of the learning styles.
Once a child learns more advanced focusing skills they can work a little better-but it requires great effort on the part of the student.
2. Use these instead
Instead look for living books, informational books, documentaries, biographies, and encyclopedias. For informational books we love Usborne and Eyewitness books (you can find a huge list in my Amazon store). We especially love Usborne Encyclopedia books. All these types of books can far out-teach regular textbooks.
Don’t worry about the fact that these types of books don’t have tests. Instead, you can create your own exam’s for record keeping and it’s actually rather easy. You can use narration to see how much they learned which is an excellent teaching tool as well because it causes children to express and teach what they have learned and this drives the lesson home for kids-so in a sense you are doing two things at once. For record keeping purposes you can also simply have them write a few notes about what they’ve learned, or if they are too little they can draw a picture.
You can also record some of their narrations and take pictures-both of which would be sweet memorabilia as well as proof of teaching. Simply Charlotte Mason has some beautiful and excellent tips (as always) for creating an exam week. I highly recommend these suggestions, we’ve found them to work very well!
If you are worried about your child “falling behind” (although that term is and should be subject to interpretation for the child’s best interest in many experts opinions-here’s a super encouraging and eye opening article on this topic) then you can always look up your k-12 state standards- or you can look at scope and sequences of other curriculum to get an idea of what concepts are being taught in specific grades. Or you can get the What Your Child Needs to Know books with core standards. Another book I’ve enjoyed using especially for the simplicity of the layout and content is What Your Child Needs To Know According To The State & According To God. It’s a very easy to use plus encouraging book that emphasizes good character training as well.
3. Have them doing as many subjects together at the same time as you possibly can.
For example, social studies, science, art, Bible time, and literature can all be taught to kids in grades K through at least grades 6 and sometimes 7 at the same time-some can be taught to all the grades at the same time-note that you might have to use additional books at different levels for this.
If you are wondering how to do this I’ll take grammar for example; just teach the youngest kids first (using their lesson as a review for the older kids since it’s usually shorter anyways) and then let the younger kids go work on their assignments, play, or color if they want and then teach to the older children their more in depth lesson. The benefit to this is if the younger children do happen to be coloring in the same room they pick up SO MUCH by osmosis-which makes their learning go so much faster as they get older!
My favorite thing about the group learning environment is that it encourages social learning and lively and helpful discussions between the kids-and best of all the kids learn how to create their own lessons that spill outside of regularly scheduled learning time! I constantly find the older kids teaching the younger kids things they learned in school-sometimes even six months to years after they were taught the concept.
4. The right curriculum
Lastly, if you don’t want to fuss with all this you can actually find curriculum designed by teachers and specialists that create unit studies designed to teach multiple children in various grades. I highly recommend Love At Home Education for affordable, specific, and high quality unit studies that you and your children can choose from for delight directed learning, and My Father’s World for complete boxed curriculum and ready made-open and go plans, but there are others out there! You can read my My Father’s World review HERE and my Love At Home Curriculum review HERE. I’ve also heard good things about The Good And The Beautiful, I’ve never tried them before though.
If you enjoyed this post be sure to read 25 Tips For How To Plan A Homeschool Year. Also, if you are homeschooling multiple grades at the same time you might love learning about our chore chart. It’s the only one I’ve found that works for our big family, so I made it available as a downloadable purchase in my Etsy shop. Having a chore chart system that works can make such a huge difference in your home! You can learn more about it HERE.
Lastly, are you homeschooling with babies or toddlers? That is not an easy feat! Did you know I started homeschooling in 2009 and my entire journey has been with newborns or toddlers in the mix? Take a peek inside our homeschool and see how we pull it off!
If you enjoyed this post be sure to leave a comment and subscribe to my newsletters to stay on top of specials and new news and deals!