Homeschool Rhythm with Multiple Children

Finding the right homeschool rhythm can really help with efficiency when working with multiple children of different levels. Balancing your time can be a juggling act, but here are some tips to find that right formula.

Homeschooling with multiple children can get rocky and feel chaotic. It doesn’t always need to be this way. Finding the right homeschool rhythm for your family can really help tame the day.

From nap times, mood swings, and everything in between, reassessing your rhythm seasonally can help add a refresh to both you and your children’s attitude toward the day.

I’m going to share some things to consider that can help you fine tune a plan.

This post is all about how to find a homeschool rhythm that can work for your family.

Things to Consider for Your Homeschool Rhythm

1. Ages of Your Children

Homeschooling with infants

When you’re in the infant stage, consider schooling only when baby is sleeping. This season of babyhood can be a blur, but it is short lived. When you have an infant, there are some great life schooling activities that your older children can learn (aside from traditional table work). All of these listed are great life skills, but also helpful to the family as a whole.

• Doing or folding laundry
• Washing or putting away dishes
• Setting the table
• Learning to fix a snack or easy meals
• Putting away books and toys
• Writing birthday or thank you cards on behalf of the family
• Dusting and vacuuming
• Learning how to enjoy a quiet reading or play hour

Homeschooling with Toddlers

When your littlest one is in the toddler stage, they tend to want to join the big kids at the homeschool table. At least for a little bit. It is helpful to rotate some things on hand so you can still be productive with your older kids in this season. Here are some things that have helped us:

• Doodle Tablet
• Magnetic Puzzle Board
• Kinetic Sand
• Sticker by Number
• Wooden Busy Board
• Paint By Sticker
• Scissor Skills
• Color Matching Pegboard
• Magnetic Drawing Board
• Magnetic Alphabet Board

One thing that worked really well for me was keeping these type of items out of reach and out of sight. I kept them in bins up higher, and they only came out (one at a time) during school time. Usually, these held my toddler’s attention for 1-2 years each, and by that time, they were ready to join our homeschool table time in longer lengths.

[RELATED POST: How to Get Back Into a Homeschool Rhythm]

Homeschooling with School Aged Kids and Teens

Schooling with teens is new to me this past year. It has opened my eyes to a new season! There are some subjects that can be completed mostly independently with some teaching and follow up. I learned that whatever your expectations are, you need to inspect them. Providing direction is necessary along with the follow up and check ins. I do the majority of teaching on Monday with my teen and follow up throughout the week, but the bulk of follow up on Thursdays.

Teens can really take on some helpful responsibilities that can bless and serve the family. Making family meals and completing household chores are some practical ways this can happen. Encouraging them in their personal Bible study time and relationship with God is critical in this pivotal phase. Having special dates or purposeful connection with your teen to invest in your relationship and keep the line of communication open with them has been helpful.

[RELATED POST: How to Get Back Into a Homeschool Rhythm]

2. Your Schedule

Working From Home or Outside the Home

If you work in addition to homeschooling, it can be tricky. Just to give you an example: My sister homeschools her two sons, and works outside the home 3 days a week. Her husband is off every other Friday. So, they decided to homeschool 4 days a week (including most weekends) and every other Friday. There are so many factors and different combinations of scenarios. It could sound like a math word problem, right?

One more example of my own. I work from home assisting my husband with our videography small business. The tasks I do can mostly be completed online. It was a struggle to say the least when I had very young children and not many established routines. Once they slept through the nights, I discovered early mornings, late afternoons, or late evenings were my prime pockets of time for work. Early mornings are my favorite since the house is quiet and I can steam roll through piles at a time, with a glass of cold brew coffee of course.

After School Activities

With more than one child, and the many after school activities to choose from, this can also be a pickle. I found that trying out a variety activities when they are young was helpful to narrow it down later on.

Now that my kids are all of school age, they are all focused on one activity with another one as a secondary hobby. Anything else, we have to carefully consider the family as a whole. With 3 children (and some of you have many more!), it can easily get out of hand without some prayerful discernment.

I do want to say that the activities are not an enemy in anyway. They actually have been so helpful in growing confidence, building skills, and also community. It has kept them away from excessive idleness, and towards physical activity, and experiencing work that leads to fruit. I also appreciate that we have found character building teachers and leadership for our children outside of just their parents and family.

Our Personal Homeschool Rhythm

Now that you have an idea of your unique circumstance, I am comfortable to share our own homeschool rhythm. I call it a rhythm vs. a homeschool schedule because I don’t log times, but try to relish the flexibility. Hoping it can give you some ideas on how someone else homeschools with multiple children.

Each child has had their own planner since Kindergarten. This may seem crazy, but it is one of the best tips that has worked out well for smooth rhythms. With multiple children, it makes it easy to ask them to move on to the next thing if you, as the parent, cannot address their need immediately. There is work up front to fill their planner out, but it has saved me many days when I needed them to continue on with their daily tasks without asking repeatedly asking, “What are we doing next, Mommy?”

[RELATED POST: My Favorite Homeschool Planner]

Morning Time

Morning Time is essential in our homeschool rhythm year-round. It keeps us grounded and united. Many sibling squabbles get squashed during this time. Something about the content of this time sanctifies any morning moods and attitudes. Our current morning time curriculum is listed out here, but these are some typical things that happen during Morning Time:

• Morning prayer or prayer requets: daily
• Bible passage: daily; kids take turns reading
• Scripture memory: about 3x/week
• Hymn: about 1-2x/week
• Poetry: about 1x/week
• Read aloud (my favorite!): daily

[RELATED POST: Creating a Morning Time Menu]

Before Lunch Rhythm

Math

After Morning Time, everyone breaks off to work on math. I sit next to my youngest to teach the daily math lesson. My middle child will come to me if he needs assistance, while my middle schooler works independently with an online class.

Language Arts

I assist my two younger children with the lessons for spelling, grammar, and writing. The bulk of these subject lessons are on Monday. The rest of the week, there is a lot more independence with some help from me. I check everything on Thursday or Friday before moving on. They each have a book they are reading independently for literature. Typically, they read a chapter per day each.

History

Since history is collectively our favorite subject, we tend to schedule this 4x a week. This usually consists of reading aloud a chapter from 1-2 living books. They orally narrate once a week, and complete written narrations twice a week in our favorite journals. My middle schooler has independent reading for history in addition to what we read together.

Science/Nature Study

We aim to do science twice a week. My middle schooler completes her physical science lessons independently with an assessment about every other week. She usually does this before morning time along with some of her other independent work since she wakes up before the little kids. I combine my younger two for science and it consists of living books and written narration. Nature study takes place once a week, but hoping to increase that to twice a week in this new year.

[RELATED POST: A Simple Way to Add Nature Study to Your Homeschool]

Afternoon Loop

Afternoon time is spent rotating with our enrichment loop, which consists of:

• Musical instrument practice
• Art
• Foreign Language
• Finance and/or Graphic Design for my middle schooler

This post was all about how we structure our homeschool rhythm with multiple children.

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