The Top Six Questions to Consider When Homeschooling Multiple Children at the Same Time
by Sarah Barrett
Is it possible to successfully homeschool multiple children at the same time? YES, it is possible, and you can do it! Lesson planning for one child is challenging enough; however, when you add another child or even more, the planning time increases significantly.
This becomes even more true if you are using a Waldorf-inspired curriculum because so much of the lesson is teacher-centered. To adequately prepare a story, practice lessons, artwork, circle time, in addition to the important inner work of a teacher can be overwhelming. What works for one family does not work for all, so it is important to spend some time considering how to customize your homeschool rhythm and curriculum for you and your family.
Before you begin, open your mind to a schooling schedule that may be considered unconventional. For example, it may not work for your family to follow a schedule where school starts at 8am and goes to 3pm for each child. Generally, homeschool students do not need 7 hours of “school” each day anyway.
Quite a lot can be accomplished in one hour with a low teacher-student ratio!
Here are the top six questions to consider when homeschooling multiple children at the same time.
1. What can be combined?
Considering the ages of your children, what subjects would serve them if they were combined? Some ideas are gardening/farming, family read-alouds, nature walks, circle time, movement, handwork, world languages, painting, recorder, and field trip Fridays. There will be times when learning presents itself unplanned, like during a car-ride discussion that turns out to be a meaningful learning experience. When you are fully present with your children during car rides, mealtimes, etc., special teaching moments happen, and these are the moments that make you smile when you think back on them.
Determine what subjects you can combine and then determine what days/times you will set aside for these subjects that work for all of your children.
2. What can be outsourced?
Outsourcing may mean hiring a tutor or enrolling in an online program like Lotus & Ivy for live virtual classes or in-person enrichment programs. It could also mean using an open-and-go curriculum or workbook for math or grammar practice.
Perhaps considering a babysitter to come in two or three times a week for a couple of hours to play with the little one while you homeschool. For example, when my daughter was younger, we hired a teenage neighbor to come in and play with her for a couple hours twice a week and she looked forward to this time with the babysitter. You may even decide to outsource house cleaning, yardwork, or cooking. Don’t forget about carpooling!
Outsourcing is a better alternative than spending money on toys to occupy little siblings or relying on TV or video games. Toys lose their novelty very quickly and end up as clutter and, of course, too much passive screen time is cognitively harmful.
3. What are your family’s weekly “specials”?
You may have heard about “busy boxes” for younger siblings. The idea is that you pull out a specific box of items to keep the younger sibling busy during the time when you are teaching an older sibling and need to minimize distractions. There is usually a busy box for each day of the week so that the items inside the box are only utilized once a week and thereby retain their novelty. Busy boxes can be a good idea if they stay simple and fairly low-cost.
Here are some ideas:
Mondays busy box: sculpting – clay, beeswax, playdough
Tuesdays: paints – watercolor, window paints, body paint
Wednesdays: a water-table, sand box, or outdoor activities like bubbles
Thursdays: chalk – for a chalkboard or the sidewalk
Fridays: Recycled items for a Rube Goldberg machine or a marble maze, blocks, or legos
You really need the busy box to help preserve at least 45 minutes of time for you to dedicate to a lesson with an older sibling. So you may need to give directions with the boxes each week. For example, for Monday’s box, slip in a little card that reads: “Today we are modeling animals!” Next week it can be flowers, houses, or food. It always helps to have a day when all work can be done in a homemade fort.
As children get older, the busy boxes may include craft supplies like macrame, whittling, designing clothes for paper dolls, or embroidery, puzzles like tangrams, origami, or cards and card tricks instructions. Or you can set aside this time for quiet reading, basketball, or gardening.
4. How can you bring younger siblings into older siblings’ lessons once a month?
My youngest child loved to listen in on my daughter’s lessons and I was fortunate because he sat quietly and listened. He loved when he could help her with a project like acting out a scene from a story or building a diorama. We made a 3D model of Africa once and he loved modeling the animals or mountains. He helped her create a shadow puppet play for The Twelve Tasks of Heracles. At the end of each main lesson, we would collaborate on a poem to summarize the main lesson block and he would always help us with the rhyme.
Bringing younger siblings into the older siblings’ lessons can be rewarding for everyone, but the key is ensuring the frequency is just right and not too much.
5. Can an older sibling help teach a younger sibling something once a week?
This doesn’t work for every sibling combination, but perhaps an older sibling can read to a younger sibling for 30 minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Or is there something an older sibling can teach a younger sibling? If their temperaments align well, of course :)
6. Finally, what does my child need right now?
This question is often best asked when you are alone with time to meditate on each child. I have always been given the best insight for this question while on my walks.
When I intentionally set aside time to think about each child and ask myself what she really needs, the answers that come intuitively are profound and true. This helps to cut through all the unnecessary and unhelpful mess of hectic schedules or comparing to other families and peers and helps me see what my child really needs this month or this year to serve her highest self. Sometimes it is more math practice and sometimes it is something not related to academics at all.
I hope these questions help to inspire you as you plan for the fall. What works this year will likely need to be adjusted for next year, and that is the beauty of homeschooling your own children because you are the best person to decide what they really need and when. Keep these questions in mind while you plan over the summer for the upcoming year as well as throughout the year when you are pondering your next lesson. May these tips be helpful to you on your homeschooling journey over the next 12 months and beyond.