How Do I Homeschool Multiple Students?
Fellow home educators share their tips on homeschooling more than one child.
Just as families grow, so do homeschools. While there may be a brief period of time when a homeschool only has one student, more often than not, home educators are teaching multiple students of various ages. This takes good planning, flexibility, and so much more. Taken from their own experiences of teaching more than one child at a time, the Homeschool+ Advisors are sharing their strategies for homeschooling multiple students.
Schedule and Coordinate
As a homeschooling mom of three, I also wondered how I would manage to homeschool multiple students at one time. It can seem like a daunting task! Here are three things that worked for me when homeschooling multiple students:
- Combining curriculum as much as possible. If more than one child can complete the same program, that saves me time and money! Homeschool+ is perfect for this because you can use the same program with multiple children, and the math and reading lessons adapt to their different levels.
- Setting times for independent work. Younger children need more direction, but even they can have independent work time reading books or working on handwriting. While everyone else works independently, you are freed up to work one-on-one with a student.
- Keep everyone together. While I believe homeschooling doesn’t have to occur at desks, I have also experienced how helpful it is to keep everyone together when homeschooling multiple children. This could look like everyone spread out at the dining room table or picnic table outside. It could be everyone in their favorite spot in the living room. Or, in our case, it looked like the kids sitting at individual desks in the same room. When everyone is in the same place, it makes it easier to answer questions, jump in where needed, and make sure everyone stays on track.
Homeschooling multiple students does take some coordination and flexibility, but it can be done. You can do this!
Time Blocking Can Help
When homeschooling multiple students, it’s important to remember that every child is unique, with their own needs, challenges, goals, and interests. However, that doesn’t mean you have to overwhelm yourself with resources, ideas, and materials or homeschool all day long.
Here’s an example of providing homeschool lessons for multiple grades: If you’re teaching your 4-year-old a spring thematic unit, give your 6-year-old a unit about animal life cycles, and your 9-year-old a unit about symbiotic relationships in the spring. You can gather the same art supplies, supplemental books, and math manipulatives to teach them all. Simply change the content they produce for you, such as writing activities or math problems.
I always recommend keeping it simple. You can maintain rigor when homeschooling your children without overloading your planning, materials, or curriculum. I also recommend time blocking if teaching your children all at once doesn’t work for you. You can set time blocks for each child so you can dedicate your undivided attention to each one. Set alarms to notify you when it’s time to change students. Leave white space in your planner in case you, or they, need a break, and know that if one task does not get completed, it’s OK to leave it for the next day. You got this!
Try the Bus Stop Approach and Grouping
Multi-level learning is one of my fondest memories of our thirty-two-year homeschool tenure. At our peak, we had seven in school, from a preschooler to a senior in high school.
We used the “bus stop approach” for morning read-aloud. I would begin with everyone in the room (littles sitting closest) and start with the easiest books (many with pictures), such as character, animal/nature, poetry, and fun beginning junior fiction. When we were ready to move on to more advanced reading (biographies, science books, literature, etc.), the littles would “get off the bus,” and I would continue with the older kids. Littles could stay and do quiet activities like Legos or coloring, or they could go play.
Another technique we used was grouping. When the ninth and tenth graders had a Spanish tutor, the sixth grader also joined. We did this in any subject in which students’ comprehension levels were similar enough. We grouped our students together for subjects whenever possible.
My best solution for keeping everyone on track was to use daily independent work charts with the school tasks that each student should do listed with checkboxes. When students weren’t meeting with me, they opened their charts and did the top tasks first. The tasks were listed in order of importance or order of what needed the most attention.
Multi-level teaching can be challenging, but we found that it helped our family unity and saved time.
Strategies for Happy and Effective Learning
Congrats! Your family has made the decision to homeschool! You are about to enter one of the most challenging yet rewarding times in your life. Perhaps one of the most appealing aspects of homeschooling is the freedom it gives home educators to focus on ideas and philosophies that are most important to them.
However, the logistics of teaching multiple children on multiple levels, not to mention the plethora of curriculum choices, can often feel overwhelming. If you find yourself feeling this way, you are not alone. Rest assured, homeschooling multiple, various-aged students is not only possible but can be worthwhile and enjoyable!
Here are some strategies to help create a peaceful and productive home learning environment:
- Create a schedule (even a loose schedule helps)
- Structure the day to provide one-on-one instruction in foundational subjects like reading and language arts. This is especially important for younger learners.
- Allow older students to engage and support younger students in their studies.
- Teach science and history lessons together as a family.
- Have a family read-aloud time.
- Make time for experience learning outside of the home with field trips.
Home educators can tailor each child’s learning to meet their individual needs through a variety of curriculums and hands-on experiences. The beauty of homeschooling is there is no right or wrong way to do school!
Quick Tips for Homeschooling Multiple Students
- Find a curriculum that works for multiple ages.
- Schedule time for independent and one-on-one work.
- Homeschool everyone in the same space when possible.
- Have different-aged students produce different work for you around the same topic.
- Use the “bus stop approach,” with older kids progressing deeper into lessons while younger students switch to something else.
- Group students together for learning whenever possible.
- Create daily independent work charts for each student.
- Adhere to a schedule.
- Have older students help younger students.
- Learn together on field trips.
Homeschool+ Can Help You Homeschool Multiple Students
Homeschool+ curriculum programs can support your preschooler as well as your second grader with lesson plans you can customize and adjust. The curriculum programs include fully adaptive math and reading programs for children ages 4 to 8, plus 12 online courses covering art, science, social studies, and more. The robust home educator tools let you easily switch between students, review their progress, adapt lesson plans, and educate multiple students at once.
Homeschoolers need a curriculum that supports their goals. See if Homeschool+ is right for you.