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Summer has flown by! It is hard to believe that we are already heading back to school, but unlike some I actually love this time of year. Don't get me wrong, I do love the summertime activities, but I crave the structure the homeschool year brings. I also enjoy the challenge and excitement of planning the upcoming school year. This year we will have two high schoolers, a middle schooler, three elementary students, a preschooler, and a baby! Yes, I may be a little crazy, but I sure love all the ages and stages and spending the days learning and exploring with our crew.
So how does one plan for homeschooling multiple children? I always start by writing out goals for each individual child, and I like to include my children in the initial discussion. What do they want to learn? What do they want to improve on this year? What did they like about last year's curriculum? What did they struggle with? The older they are the more involvement they have in choosing their curriculum.
MORNING TIME:
We all start our school day together with Morning Time. While it is not an actual class or subject, Morning Time is what I consider to be the most important part of our homeschool day. After breakfast and morning chores, we all gather to watch
World Watch News, a 10 minute program that delivers news and other information from a Biblical worldview. We then move onto a few minutes of family worship. We pray together, read the proverbs of the day, sing a song, and work on memorizing scripture. Our goal for this year is to memorize the book of 1 John. Afterwards, we read a chapter or so from our Read Aloud book, usually a Classic. We then work on a family goal together. Last year, we worked on financial literacy and took
Dave Ramsey's Foundation in Personal Finance. This year we are going to work on learning Spanish together. While Morning Time only takes about 45 minutes total, I love it because no matter how the rest of our day goes, I feel like we accomplished the most important tasks.
HISTORY:
History is one subject we continue to do together with all the ages (aside from our Sophomore). Here is what that looks like.
Step 1: Choose a good textbook to use as the backbone. For History, I like using Masterbooks America's Story or World's Story. Typically, a textbook geared towards grades 4-6 is simple enough for the younger students to understand, but still contains enough material for you to build on for your older students. This year we are doing
America's Story 2. (See High School Exception below)
Step 2: Choose historical fiction novels and picture books to supplement. I often read these books aloud, but during busy seasons have utilized audiobooks as well.
Step 3: Add daily writing prompts at an age appropriate level. For my younger kids, this may mean more drawing than writing. As they advance through the grades, I expect their responses to get more in depth. Writing prompts are great for helping a student truly digest the material they have read and apply it to their own lives.
Step 4: Add hands on activities at an age appropriate level. This may be anything from lego reenactments to debates to board games to field trips and more! Children learn and retain so much more when they are having fun! Check out my
homeschooling tab for ideas and inspiration.
SCIENCE:
Science is also done together in a similar manner. In the past we have used Exploring Creation by Apologia as the backbone for our curriculum. Last year, we reveled in Paleontology by Masterbooks. This year we are trying out
Homestead Science. We are only one week in and loving it! You know you have found a winner when the kids are asking to learn more. But, we may need to buy some more land after this course! Each child will keep their own Science Journal to record their own observations and discoveries in an age appropriate manner. Here is an example I blogged on several years ago, but this method of
Journaling continues to work well for us:
Journaling - A Homeschool Study on Trees.
MATH:
Several years ago we switched to
Math Lessons for a Living Education by Masterbooks and the more I use this curriculum the more I appreciate it. Lessons are short; however, the spiral approach is gentle but effective. After hearing from many other homeschool podcasters about CTC Math, we gave it a try last year, but ultimately the mastery approach (of introduce a topic, learn it, and move on) did not work well for our children and I felt like they were not retaining the information.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
This is where our family is all over the place! Some of our children learned to read very early (as young as 3.5 years old), and some of our other children have dyslexia and are very challenged by reading, spelling, and writing. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out which curriculum works best for each child. Here are some of the books we are using this year:
EXTRACURRICULARS:
We fill out the rest of our homeschool day with music lessons, Trail Life, entrepreneur opportunities, service projects, sports, and more! Our son used some of his money from mowing (thank you
We Are Raising Men) to purchase a
Hack Pack Subscription. This is by far our favorite STEM resource and will help him take his coding to the next level.
HIGH SCHOOL EXCEPTIONS:
Our Sophomore is taking most of her classes through a hybrid homeschool academy again this year. She will go to the academy once a week. There she will receive most of her instruction and assignments to do at home throughout the week. While her teachers at the academy do most of the assignments and grading, I stay highly involved and have had to make some changes to the curriculum, testing, and grading to meet NCAA standards for eligibility. If you have a high schooler that hopes to play sports in college, PLEASE look into these NCAA eligibility requirements. Some classes (like Biology lab) she will take through the academy for enrichment only, meaning I chose which textbook she will use, will be responsible for her weekly assignments, and will administer and grade all quizzes and tests. I will also be providing the format that I want her to write up her lab reports, but she will do the actual labs at the academy. However, for the most part she is doing her own thing apart from the rest of the children.
Our freshman will be joining us for most of the day, however, for history she will also use
Exploring America by Notgrass. What attracted me to this particular curriculum is not only its biblical worldview (which is consistent with the Masterbooks text we will be using), but it is also available on audiobook and has suggested activities, quizzes, and tests for the high school level. She is also doing BJU Spanish 1 online and Apologia Biology.
Whatever you choose to do this year, I wish you and your family a wonderful, fulfilling homeschool year. I'd love to connect with you on Instagram
@Pocketful_of_Treasures.
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