Question:
Sometimes teaching a wide range of ages, grades, subjects, whatever....can
be difficult. I find it difficult on the days that both of my children need
special attention to learn a concept. I try to juggle it so that one child
is working independently (reading, writing, or math) while I'm with the
other one.
I wonder what it would be like with three. I'd love to see Kanga's input on
this one.
Answer:
I agree. Sometimes it's difficult. Really difficult. But I have a few things
going for me that others may not.
My husband does math with the two teenagers, he has since they hit fourth
grade.
I've also been homeschooling for ten years. My eldest was in ps kindergarten,
our daughter who has so many disabilities was in ps before we adopted her.
Otherwise, nobody but the parents have been to ps. This means we do not have
to fight some unpleasant assumptions some children learn in some schools. The
idea that learning is something that others do for you and to you, rather than
something you do for yourself, for one example. The idea that learning
something new is boring and dull and should only happen between the hours of 8
and 3 is another. The idea that mom doesn't really know much is another.
My children, especially the oldest two, are independent workers. I only need
to give them the very bare bones of an assignment (we're studying vikings,
girls) and then they take off. They get online and put books on hold, good
ones (they read Beowulf voluntarily, for example, and loved it). They look
things up on the web. They write papers, they read to the younger children or
get books the younger girls can read for themselves. We discuss what they are
doing, I look over their work, we discuss it some more.
Somehow, I've instilled in them the idea that learning is fun, that we know and
seek more knowledge, because it is delightful. That's half the battle.
I've also learned that I do have time. Their lives will not be ruined if I
fail to get the concept of skip-counting through to them in September, but
instead have to come back in November and try again. In our household, too,
hs'ing is not something we do for a few hours a day. It is our lifestyle. It
is who we are. We talk about what we are learning " when we get up in the
morning, when we walk by the wayside, when we rise up and when we sit down..."
to paraphrase Deut. 6 (I hope it's 6).
On a less philosophical and hopefully more practical note, I can pass along one
thing I did when I just had two children and in the beginning of our homeschool
walk. My preschooler was constantly asking me to tell her what to do while I
was working with my first grader. I made little learning centers around the
house, setting up a place in the closet with story books and read along
cassettes, a place in the hall to do puzzles, a place in the "schoolroom" to
string beads, another to color, another to do play dough, and so on. I took
pictures of Tigger using each center and put the pictures in a box. When she
wanted to know what to do, I had her pull a picture from the box and she had to
do that activity for at least fifteen minutes.
Later, as the girls got older and we got more girls, I made a schedule of
things they should do if they were waiting for my help. From 9-10 if they
needed me and I was not readily available they were to play with the tangrams.
From 10 to 12 they were to do the Geo Safari. Later still I made this even
simpler by organizing the list by days rather than by the hour. On Mondays
they did math activities in those extra moments, on Tuesdays language arts, on
Wednesday Science activities...
IME, they seem to have a hard time, especially when younger, deciding what to
do while they wait. This took care of that problem, helped teach them the
value of a golden minute, and I don't really need it any more with the older
two.
What I do find hard is switching gears from the academic stuff to the more
boring, repetitive, daily training in basic skills like washing her face,
putting a shirt on frontwards, putting away her shoes, spreading butter on
bread, etc that our 11 y.o. needs. She functions much better with a really
structured routine, and while I can give others a routine to follow, I find it
hard to do myself. Which is probably one of the reasons God gave us this
child=)
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