How does homeschooling multiple children work?

[MundaCorMeum]

from diaduit:

Do you 'sit in' for all the lessons or read alouds?  I don't, I give work to do but when needed I will sit and teach something if they need it e.g.  new to fractions or history lesson.

How many hours a day do you give to school?  I only do 3 hours for primary and 1 hour for junior infants .
The older two have paid for curriculum for A levels for the older and similar for 15 year old.  I never really teach them and have topped up with grinds from a maths teacher.

For Morning Time block (which I call our Family Liturgy), I do sit in for all those lessons.  It starts with prayer, Epistle of the day, scripture memory, and a hymn.  Then, I work through our loop of enrichment studies.  We end with the Gospel of the day and a chant. I am leading or reading all the lessons for that.  Any "read alouds" are read by me, except for poetry and the daily Mass readings, which I allow the older kids to read, so they can have practice reading aloud and speaking to a group.

For independent studies, I only sit down and do all lessons with the non-reading age children, which is only my 1st grader right now.  He takes not quite an hour, maybe, when his focus is good....but, he's a boy, so  . My 2nd grader can read, but she still does some read alouds with the first grader and I, in addition to her own lessons, because I want her to. Next year, she will be on her own, unless she has questions or needs help, like all the other older ones.  I also do math with my 6th grader, because I want to make sure she's grasping the foundations for algebra and geometry well at this stage.  I will have her do a lesson on her own occasionally, to save me time and so I can gauge her level of understanding of concepts. For any non-read-aloud reading assignments (which is all of my older kids' independent work, outside of morning time), they are still required to give me a narration....either written, typed, or oral.  That is their comprehension portion of the lesson.  I would say school takes my attention for about three and a half hours each day.  Not all of the kids are working for all of that duration, though.  I move around from student to student, checking on progress, listening to narrations, helping 1st grader with his lessons, swinging the toddler and four year old while singing solfa songs, and otherwise fussing at everyone to stay on track and stop bickering and making messes  . 

[MundaCorMeum]

5.  If you have some self-motivated kids who can read well, they can often do things on their own all week, no problem.

Would you say it is trivial to homeschool properly?

I should modify what I said.

The step process isn't hard in itself, but there's still plenty of work involved.

Keep in mind that it's a generalization.  Difficulty is affected by:

• Your children's ages
• Their motivation level
• The number of children
• Your own workload
• Your own affinity (or lack thereof) for the various subjects
• Is your spouse willing to help?
• Support groups
• Making your own curriculum/using a tutoring service/paying for a curriculum/paying for a curriculum, plus full grading

I would agree with this.  Homeschooling is both much easier and much harder than most people think.

[Michael Wilson]

God Bless all of our mothers who make the great sacrifice to home school their children.

[Obrien]

My experience is similar to Munda's. Though I must confess I am not nearly as organized. I start with one child and go down the line helping each one with work that they need my assistance with. I repeat this cycle until the school day is done. While I am working with individual children the others are doing independent work. The younger ones keep each other busy and sometimes an older child puts their school books down and help with a baby. We also do read alouds which may include a history or science book. Even if a 5 year old doesn't understand everything they are sure to gain something from it.
School time here is from 9-3 with an hour break for lunch/tidy/recess. At night, the children like to work on puzzles, math fact sheets,, music and reading. Since money is not in abundance they find different ways to be entertained and I find that that includes more "brainy" activities.

[james03]

Today it is a lot easier with distance learning.  I think the big misunderstanding with homeschooling is the time required.  Homeschooling is a lot more efficient and doesn't take the 8 or so hours they waste at public schools.

When we (she) were homeschooling, we cheated as we were always near "hybrid homeschools", where you signed up for particular classes and sent your kids to the "school".  It's a sacrifice, no doubt, but worth it.  All of my 5 kids are still Trad Catholic and turned out well.  Note we also availed ourselves to additional opportunities like county sports and classical ballet.  Something I recommend.

But that is moot, because there are a lot of options today with homeschooling programs.