TOS Blog Cruise: Homeschool as the new One Room Schoolhouse

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When I was growing up, I remember watching Little House on the Prairie. I loved reading the books and I enjoyed the TV show as well. Actually, I harbored secret resentment that I wasn’t named Laura Elizabeth like Laura Ingalls Wilder has been. Instead, one of my younger sister’s got that middle name.

There were several things about her life that were different than mine ~ no ‘creature comforts’ like indoor plumbing and central heating. As infatuated I might have been with Laura’s life, I doubt that I would want to give those up. But, one thing about her life that intrigued me was the environment in which she learned ~ first at home with her mother as teacher and then in a one room schoolhouse.

Little did I know then that I’d be educating my own children at home in what is in essence the new one room schoolhouse. At least, that is how I view our family’s homeschool. We do not school in just one room. But, we do have the same hurdle of educating children of different ages and abilities.

And, that leads me to the questions poised for the TOS Crew Blog Cruise this week:

How do you handle multiple ages?/How do you homeschool with a baby or toddler?

Since we began our homeschool journey in 2007, I have been taking a two pronged approach to managing the different levels. For each child, I need to give them the tools needed for learning; specifically how to read, write and do basic math. Ideally, they will also develop a love of learning that will then last a lifetime. To achieve this goal, I have carved out time to work one on one with each child during the early years. So, I might have a 15 or 20 minute pocket of time set aside to work on phonics with the younger child while the older children are given independent work. That first year of homeschooling found me sitting between P and R with D at a nearby table. D would be doing something fun (a coloring page or play-dough) while I worked one on one with R to gain reading skills. All the while, P was sitting where I could keep an eye on him.

Aside from language arts and math, I have taken to combining the boys for other subjects. During our second year of homeschooling, I had P and R both working on the same science course. After the previous year with two separate courses of study, it was refreshing for me to not spend double the time.

This year we are studying world history as a group with the older boys having more expected of them than for D. R and D are doing science together with P working on his own. However, that might be changing as P often wants to join in on the younger boys’ studies. We also will be doing a few unit studies that allow each boy to work at their own level while learning about the same topic as the other brothers.

So, that’s the approach I’ve taken to managing multiple ages in our homeschool. As for the second question…dealing with a baby in the house is a new one for us. I can not honestly say that I’ve found a good balance yet. When I was still pregnant with Little J, I felt confident that we could get most of the work needing one on one attention done while Little J napped. Maybe if we had not moved and been in flux for the past few months, we might have achieved that already. But, instead I have experienced few days when Little J will nap for a block of time.

My dream for the not too distant future?

To get our school space set up in our new house in short order after moving in (hopefully just 2 more weeks to go!)

I plan to get back to our pre-baby use of workboxes / workfolders to help the boys manage their work AND to help me more quickly see what needs attention. We have done checklists from the start, but the visual nature of the workboxes seems to help a lot.

I am also praying that Little J will finally settle into a routine so that the older boys and I can more easily achieve our goals. But, by that time, we will be faced with different challenges as J becomes a toddler.