Homeschooling many ages New Baby

One of the challenges that face many Christian homeschooling families (including mine) is How to Best Serve the Needs of Several Children?
Classroom teachers face this challenge as well, usually with a group of 20 or more. As moms & dads we typically have less children than that, but do have the added challenge of differing ages as well as different abilities and strengths among our children.

Having had a new baby arrive on Jan. 13th, this is a fresh topic on my mind. It is not the nursing newborn that disrupts our routine, however. It is the 2 1/2 year old toddler whose place on my lap has been overtaken and while he can do many things on his own, he is not yet ready to join the older children in their lessons.

Here are a few things that we have found work well for us.
1) Partnering older children with younger children. My level 5 math student can easily sit beside her level one brother and guide him through his lessons. This frees up mom and dad to help another older child.
2) Combining as many subjects as possible. We use resources like Sequential Spelling, Mystery of History, and English from the Roots up. These are easy to use as a group with everyone participating in a lesson, and then older children are assigned additional work to supplement what we've done together.
3) Giving older children independent work whenever possible. My oldest is 13, and this is the first year that she has really been able to work through almost all of her subjects on her own, coming to her father and I with questions and guidance as necessary. I no longer have to create daily lesson plans for her. We've also started using more curriculum that is user friendly and needs little in the way of "teaching" on my part. Piano for life is an example; the DVD lessons are taught by a teacher and then each student is responsible for tracking their own practice time. Right now, all five older children are watching a DVD lesson called "Teaching kids to sing". It provides warming up exercises and practice in posture and proper breathing. All the children can watch it together and glean at their own level.
4) We have a posted chart on a dry erase board. The graph (names across the top and subjects down the side) is posted in wet erase so that it stays there when the board is erased - it has to be washed off to be removed. We use dry erase markers to put a check mark into a box after a child has completed a subject. This allows my husband and I to work one on one with a child on different days throughout the week, and everyone knows what is left to do, with a quick glance at the board.
5) For my toddler, I keep a seat on the floor right next to me and set down my infant whenever he is soundly sleeping(usually when he has just finished nursing) and then invite my toddler to take my lap in an effort to give him as much snuggling time as he needs. I can do this at the table and still be available for other children who need help with their lessons.
6) Also, for my toddler; when everyone is working diligently and no one is able to entertain him; we offer "school books" and paper, pencils, crayons, markers, stickers, etc. and give him important "assignments". Today, we received a sheet of stickers in the mail as part of an advertisement. His assignment was to move the stickers from their sheet onto a piece of blank copy paper. Admittedly, this is not necessarily an 'educational' task. I could maybe claim some hand/eye coordination, but primarily it is busy work. However, he is learning that there are times when he must work at a task while he is waiting for his older siblings to play with him. He is learning that even though there are seven other people in this house who could entertain him, sometimes he will have to entertain himself, sometimes he will have to play alone.
7) Using tip#6 there are many other tasks that toddlers can do that are more productive/educational. Coloring books, puzzles, and simple games are great for including them. One of our favorites recently has been a small dry erase board, one or two markers and an eraser. He enjoys imitating mom and dad who often write memorization verses or prayer requests and other things on our big dry erase board. He can write down his ideas and erase them as often as he likes on his little board.
8) Keep things simple. We don't take off on days that the local schools do. Because we continued to work through the public school winter break, we are now able to relax about school work as we prepared for our new baby's birth and as we take time to welcome him and get to know him. If we miss a few days or lessons now, we know that it's okay.
9) Be flexible in your daily schedule. Right now, with a new baby, a toddler, and children 6, 8, 10, and 13; my ten and thirteen year old daughters are desperately needed by me for many tasks around the house. From washing dishes and preparing meals to scrubbing bathroom floors. Some things are more difficult for me to do at this time, and I need their help, but I also want to make sure that they have time to keep up with their studies as well. This means that we never follow a "school" schedule. In the mornings, the girls typically help with chores and the boys do their lessons. After lunch, small children have naps while older children work on lessons. Because our oldest has much more to do academically (7th grade is much more demanding than 3rd), she often has work still to do at the end of the day. We send children to their rooms at 8pm, little ones to sleep and older children are able to use this time for extra studying, finishing lessons or quiet time to read and listen to music. We understand that this means, mom or dad may have to be up at 10pm to answer history or science questions, but that works for our family. Our oldest is much more pleasant and motivated to work in the evenings and enjoys the quiet time after everyone else is asleep - we often allow her to sleep a little later in the mornings. A homeschool blessing! School doesn't have to begin at a certain time.
10) Be flexible in your yearly schedule. We believe that education is a constant, not something that happens during certain times of day or certain seasons of the year. We work on math skills all year, so we don't have to review in the fall what we forgot from the spring. Our science in the summer is focused on things we can explore outdoors; plants and animals, the growth and harvest of our garden, and in the winter, we do more chemistry and science that involves baking. Homeschool Blessing! We can pick and choose our lessons based on where we are and what we feel like doing. Example: Last summer was especially windy here, and we had several tornado warnings, so we studied tornadoes and other weather phenomenon for many weeks.

So, that's my top ten list! I hope you find it helpful. I would love to hear from all of you with any ideas that have worked for your family. One more thing, we regularly use unit studies as a means of studying subjects together as a family. To learn more about the some of the unit studies that we have put together for our family and for yours, please visit our website: www.vacationeducationbooks.net and check out our book series.

Help your kids want to clean up litter

Read the creation account in Genesis with your child. Then, have them create an earth out of art. Any medium they choose; crayons and paper, a paper mache mobile, a creative sculpture. However they want to represent their idea of the earth they live on, in an art form, as creative as they are able, with time and effort put into it.
Now, ask them which would be more pleasing to them - if you dumped the kitchen garbage on top of their creation or if you put it on display and treated it as though you cared for it.
Then, ask them which they think would make God happier, dumping our trash on His Creation, or treating it like we care about it?

This is a great simple lesson that helps kids of all ages to have some empathy, and leads them to want to take care of the world in which we live.

This lesson is an excerpt from Vacation Education destination Animal Kingdom.
Corinne Johnson is a Christian homeschooling mom of five (will be six any day now), help meet to her husband Don, and author or Vacation Education Books; travel guides for families who love to learn and unit studies for families who love to travel.
Learn more at www.vacationeducationbooks.net

Nature Hike in your socks

Here's a fun activity that will certainly show up in the Animal Kingdom book.
You will need:
A nice day for taking a walk outdoors (I know, I know, it's January and many of you are buried in snow, so you'll have to save this activity for the spring).
A pair of old mismatched socks, preferably dads since they need to be big (and cotton seems to work best)
A paper bag
A book for looking up plants and seeds
A large white piece of paper or poster board to display your finds

You may also want to have:
A large planting pot
Some potting soil

Here is the first part of the activity:
You pull the socks on over your shoes and go for a nature walk
when you are done, pull off the socks and put them into the paper bag (this way all of the items that stuck to your socks while you were walking won't end up stuck to the inside of your car's upholstery)
Next, take your items home and spread them out on your white display paper.
Use your nature book to identify the plants and seeds that came home with you.

You can either spread them out on your display and label them as a science project or you can Plant Your Sock! (This part of the activity is usually most successful if done during the fall after many trees and plants have lost their leaves or in the spring when plants are letting go of their seeds into the wind).

Put some potting soil into a pot and bury the sock in the soil, keep the soil moist with water and wait to see what happens.

Corinne Johnson is a Christian homeschooling mom of five (almost six), a help meet to her husband Don, and the author of Vacation Education Books; Travel Guides for Families Who Love to Learn & Unit Studies For Families Who Love to Travel!
Learn more at www.vacationeducationbooks.net

New Years Day activity; start a Christmas Jar

Are you past the stay out all night, partying stage of your life?
Does the idea of drinking until midnight make you tired just thinking about it?
If I answered yes, does that make me old?

I am 38 weeks pregnant, have five young children at home; my idea of a wonderful New Year's Eve was going to bed at 9pm (without my husband, so that my big old belly could have some extra room). I watched a few programs on the computer, worked a few Soduko puzzles, and then fell asleep (long before midnight).

But, I awoke this morning feeling a bit like I should have done something special to commemorate the incoming year. It didn't have to happen at midnight, but it's 2009 now. Perhaps we should mark it in some way to make it different, better than 2008, but how?

We started today to fill our first 'Christmas Jar'. If you are not familiar with this, neither were we until one showed up on our doorstep on Christmas Eve. There it was, a big glass jar filled with coins and a book. The book was titled "Christmas Jars." I declared that evening that we would read the book out loud as a family before we even opened the jar. So, over this past week, we read the story of Hope Jensen, an aspiring journalist whose life was changed by a mysterious anonymous jar of change that showed up at her front door. When she set out to detect the giver of the jar, she was led on an investigative journey to the start of the Christmas Jar tradition. We read about how many lives were changed over the years, not only by the jar that one family gave away each year, but by the inspiration that it provided to others to do the same, and the domino effect of this one act of kindness.

We finished reading the book yesterday evening, and opened the jar this morning. We counted the coins, not a life changing amount, but more than we would have imagined. The $ amount is irrelevant when we think of the love that went into this jar throughout the year as some family set aside their change, day by day, thinking of someone who they could bless with it.

For me, I tend to feel very alone as my pregnancy ends, and immediately after the baby is born. It is a time of extreme loneliness for me. Although surrounded by my husband and children, I do not usually feel up to visiting others and we do not have many guests. I often long for someone to share my emotions with as those around me love me and care for me, but do not have any idea what I have just went through or am currently going through. I am sad that I do not have many other new moms to chat with, or that more people don't come by to see how we are doing. Knowing that someone, somewhere saw us and our needs and thought we were worthy of their blessing is an honor. It reminds me that I am not alone, I am not invisible and someone trusts that we will make good use of this gift.

We thanked God for the people He led to bring us this gift and we asked Him to guide us in the way He would like us to use it. We then cleaned out the jar and set it on the table and put a few of our own coins in it. We are already excited as we think about spending the year watching it fill up with our spare change (it is likely that we will have less to give than what we were just given), but we now have a reason to look forward to Christmas Eve 2009 - when we will get to give away our Christmas Jar.

So, if you are looking for a meaningful way to start the new year, perhaps you will find a jar to set on your counter, where you can drop in a little spare change here and there and watch it fill, anticipating the way that you will change the life of some other in need when you give away your Christmas Jar.

Corinne Johnson is a Christian homeschooling mother of five (soon to be six - just two more weeks), a help meet to her husband in his business, and the author of Vacation Education Books; travel guides for families who love to learn.