Is it possible to home school with 4 very young children? Looking for advice from someone who's done it!

Question

I am going to homeschool my children. They are ages 5, 4, 2, and 4 months. My days are packed and I collapse in exhaustion at 10pm. I just can't see how I am going to fit in any kind of homeschooling. Looking for advice from someone who has multiple children close in age and how they managed homeschooling in addition to regular household chores.

Answer 1

Yes it is possible. Very challenging indeed, but so is anything worthwhile. I just recently purchased a book that I think will be my salvation in order to be able to continue homeschooling with many little ones. I am homeschooling a 10th, 4th, two 1st, 4 yr. old, 2 yr. old, and 7 mos. old. It is called "Managers of Their Homes". You can find it online at www.titus2.com. Don't be afraid to give it a try. I know people that have done it and have all claimed it was the thing that made it possible. Good luck!

Answer 2

First of all, consider what it will mean to homeschool your 5yo--very little time. You do NOT have to spend the day, or even the whole morning, homeschooling a child that age. You can include phonics as part of a ritual when you are doing dishes, you can have the child grab two handfuls of utensils and to add together how much they are, you can give a practice worksheet and more. You do not, I repeat, have to spend the whole morning homeschooling. You don't even necessarily have to sit down. Your two oldest are so close in age you should really combine them, as much as they are capable of doing the same thing. Allow some leeway for the more advanced one to get more challenging things, but they can do the same thing at the same time. By the time they're old enough that you might need to provide a bit more input, they'll be 8 and 7, and your other two will be 5 and 3. Those are very manageable ages all together.

You definitely have your hands full, but I would guess that you can tweak your daily routine a bit--and perhaps change expectations--to give yourself some more time. If you don't have a routine but just move from one thing to the next, then there's part of the problem. Take a good look at what you do in a day and why they are so full. Do you do more cleaning than needs to be done? Are you picking up after every little thing as it happens? Are you doing less than full loads of laundry? So many things usurp our time and we let them!

I remember at one point, just with 2 kids, spending my days running after them picking up, doing dishes, then going back to picking up and trying to fit things in like laundry. It was insane. Then I realized that *I* was the one being insane: why should every little thing be picked up all the time? Why am I doing all the picking up? Why were they being allowed to spread their messes all over the house? I just took a good hard look at what I was allowing to happen and changed things: I stored half the toys, they were permitted to play in only one room, we did a collective cleanup right before lunch and at the end of the day before supper, they helped me more (yes, even if they were 2 or 4). I finally had time to breathe. We can all spend our entire days cooking and cleaning and doing laundry if that's how we set them up to be, because there's always dirty laundry, always a mess to clean up and always something to cook.

Some things that can help guide you:

MOTH--Managers of Their Homes http://www.titus2.com/

FlyLady--http://www.flylady.com

You can do this. You do have to be willing to see on your part what you can change about how you've been habitually doing things, to believe it's possible if you are willing to change.

Answer 3

You are already homeschooling!  Have you taught them how to walk and talk and eat, dress, potty?  You're already doing it!  Do you read to them?  Sing with them?  Take a walk and talk about all the things you see?  You're already doing homeschool!

Your oldest should be starting kindergarten, right?  You can teach kindergarten things just by doing all the stuff you have to do all day.  When you sort the laundry, you're teaching matching, size, color.  When you fold the towels, you can teach half, fourths.  You can teach measuring when you measure the laundry detergent, when you cook things that you measure.  You can teach counting when you set the table "one for mommy, one for daddy, one for you, one for ...."  You can teach counting and sorting and matching when you're picking up toys and putting away.  Teach clock and calendar when talking about how long something takes, when an appointment is, when the tv show comes on, when it's time to get up and time for bed.    Sing the ABC song.  Put Sesame Street on television, or similar type videos you can get from the library.  At the library you can check out books that talk about animals and animals homes, and tons and tons of "subject matter" (science and social studies topics).  Grow some seeds in a plastic cup.  Find seeds and leaves and observe clouds outdoors.  Talk about the weather.  Don't forget Dr. Seuss books for "phonemic awareness" (listening to rhyme and rhythm in language) -- and some fun!

If you want to add some writing, get the pre-K or K level "Everything" huge workbook at WalMart.  It's about ten bucks, I think.  It's got some phonics, some numbers, some pre-writing and writing.  Do this only about 15-20 ninutes a day -- you can squeeze that in with the 4 and 5 year olds while the infants are sleeping.

My point is, kindergarten doesn't have to be "all day at a table" kind of learning.  Neither does first grade.

Look up the World Book encyclopedia's "Typical Course of Study".  It will tell you what things are usually covered in a typical public school curriculum by grade.  I think you'll see that you can accomplish most of this just by living and having fun with your kids.

I know it can be tough to find some time just for the two bigger ones when the 2yo and infant demand so much time and attention.  But you can!

The three oldest kids are big enough to "help" you around the house.  Picking things up, wiping up spills, putting things where they go, throwing things in the trash, carrying small bundles.  You need them to, and they need to!

Congratulations on beginning your homeschool journey!

Answer 4

I'm a single mom of a 6 yo and twin 2 yr olds.  Our gym (about $80/mo) offers 2 hrs of childcare/day that the twins look forward to while my 6 yo and I do most of his studies in the cafe.  It can be done at home with a gate on the school room and lots of running back and forth, but we're all happier at the gym.  I fit in housework during their nap while my son does his silent reading.  The little ones are on a schedule together for naps, etc.

Answer 5

I have 4 yo twins who are really naughty. When I am doing the housework, they are always running around the house and shouting at each other. They don't like school and especially hate math. I have the same experience as you since they were born. I tried many ways to homeschool them, but all failed.

I asked many friends for help. Some of them suggested Beestar.org as an education resource. My twins have just tried some free math practice. I would like to see whether they will behave better by doing this interesting online exercise.

Answer 6

There are women on the Well Trained Mind forum in exactly your situation :) In fact, one has 10 kids! Like the others said, none of yours are old enough to require formal schooling yet anyway. Unless your 5 year old is asking for it, keep it informal until next year. That way your baby will be old enough to occupy itself a bit. The activities you already do are probably sufficient. If you like, add some non-fiction in with your library books.

Answer 7

My mom homeschooled with four kids ages 9, 7, 4 and 1.  Just remember that at the ages that your kids are, you can just start slow.  A 5 year old would only need to do a little bit of school every day, and for the 4 and 2 year olds, I would just read to them and help them learn numbers and the alphabet and stuff.  It doesn't need to be a huge operation.  Thats what my mom did and I was a college honors student so obviously it worked!

Answer 8

Well, be encouraged that until your oldest reaches about 7 or 8, you honestly don't need to do much "formal" school with any of your kids.  Up until then, it's mainly based around play, practical living (baking cookies with Mommy, that sort of thing) and reading library books.

The next bit of good news is that you can group your 4 and 5yo's together, unless one is significantly ahead of the other.  There really is no reason that they can't be on the same level for most subjects, which means that you can teach them together and they can work together.  (Again, this really isn't even necessary for another couple of years.)

Now for the solution - unit studies.  Unit studies, rather than being segregated into subjects, are cross-curricular.  This means that you work on all sorts of subject-related skills that center around one particular topic, rather than separating them out and doing five different workbook pages.  For example:

Say you're studying butterflies.  For science, you can get a butterfly habitat (about $15-20 bucks at Barnes and Noble or Michael's) and watch the caterpillars form chrysalises and then morph into butterflies.  For reading, you can read stories and early field guides about butterflies from the library.  For geography, find out what the migration pattern of the Monarch is.  For math, how long does it take them to fly?  How long would it take us to travel?  For language arts, have them write or dictate a story about changing into a butterfly or a day as a butterfly.  For art, make butterfly crafts - coffee filter butterflies, clay butterflies, etc.  Another science project might be to plant a butterfly garden and see which butterflies come to it.

Of course, this is over the course of a month or so - you don't do all this at once!  However, by teaching them according to topics, you can separate out their individual skills without having to teach entirely different lessons.  For example, your oldest might work on reading a story to the two youngest and writing a few sentences about butterflies.  Your next oldest might play a butterfly math game (butterfly patterned math cards) to practice addition facts.  Your two youngest might work on identifying main body parts (wings, legs, head, etc) and identifying colors on the wings.

There are many curricula that plan these out for you; some of them that I would recommend are:

Lapbooks with Hands of a Child http://www.handsofachild.com/shop/Defaul... (units that are designed for PreK through High School)

Konos http://www.konos.com/index.html (a little heavier on prep, but very complete.  K-8.)

Five in a Row http://www.fiveinarow.com/index.html

Hope that helps!