I thought I would write on how a typical homeschooling week looks for us. How does it work when you teach multi-grade level kids? I have a 3rd grader, a 6th grader and a 7th grader.
Some homeschoolers keep their kids at home the whole week, we happen to have an excellent supplement program at our community so we decided to send them once a week. These tutorial programs run once or twice a week. The discovery of using a tutorial to supplement homeschooling is a gem. The kids spend an entire day learning a sport in PE class, doing art and crafts, learning facts in history, and trying out a science experiment. They also experience practicing for school plays during Christmas and spring. In other words, the tutorial does the messy and hard stuff that parents dislike at home.
As I have mentioned in my previous blog, for the first 4 years, I chose a curriculum where the need for teacher instruction was high. On the 5th year, I shifted to a material that had more independent work.
I teach them Math, Science, History, and English. We usually start lessons at 9:00 a.m. and end up the latest at 3:00 p.m. I start by giving instructions to my older kids then leave them as I teach my 3rd child. After a lesson with my younger one, I give him a break and go back to my older two to check their work and answer any questions they might have. Our schedule varies slightly depending on the scope of the subject and their level of concentration for that day. Yes, their mood plays a big part of accomplishing the lessons. Since I only have 3 students, I can see every form of inattentiveness. My challenge is to make them stay focused and how they should respond to me as their teacher and not their mother every time I call them out. I give them a lot of breaks but they usually grab a snack while working. We do our work at the dining table, except for my second who needs a quieter space to concentrate; he usually goes up to his room. This is our set up.
Last year, we were still able to implement this schedule when I had my 4th baby since she mostly sleeps the whole morning. I might be changing venue with my rising 4th grader this coming fall and do homeschooling in the bonus room while my now 1-year-old moves around. I also need to change his curriculum. More tweaking is needed to accommodate a curious toddler in our schedule. That’s a different level of needed grace, right there.
Friday is house cleaning day for us, which counts as part of homeschooling. The kids change their bed sheets, vacuum their room, and dust their tables. The older ones clean their own bathrooms.
Any extra curricular activities like Karate, Piano, Basketball, and Ballet are scheduled after 3 p.m. during the week. So after home school, I become a driver dropping them to their class and picking them up. Sometimes, I just wait in the car for them to get done if the class is only an hour or less. We all come home just in time for me to make dinner. That’s pretty much it. The schedule is an adjustment if you are new to homeschooling but the rewards of flexibility is incomparable. To see your kids learn and to actively mold their character are priceless.
Now that summer break is here, I still need to think how to keep them busy and come up with fun activities. But I think that’s another blog…
Having a Nice Day 