One thing about homeschooling multiple kids is that you have to get creative in keeping everyone occupied. We always start our school together with morning prayer, scripture reading and devotion. Afterwards I assign certain activities for the older kids as I do lessons with the younger ones first. It works pretty well because I know that my older kids can follow directions and do the activities independently until it’s their turn to do their lessons with me.
The activities I assign vary from reading, writing practice, fun learning games they play together etc. When you have very little ones...specifically a one year old toddler that walks around getting into anything he can get his hands on, things can get tricky.
Currently we are living together with my mother-in-law and she has a cat named Sasha. My one year old is fascinated and intrigued by this cat. He follows her around when he sees her and yells her name “Sasha, Sasha!” Now this is a patient cat as she sometimes lets him pet her but she slowly sneaks away as he’s doing so and then BOOM, she takes off fast like lightening to get away lol. Then when my son doesn’t see her he asks “Where’s Sasha?” So my other children know how much he loves her and he will stop what he is doing to follow her around.
Last week as I was working with my daughter, all of the boys were in the room having playtime. At this point they were all finished with their daily activities and lessons. I heard my older two sons yelling,
Stop it, No that’s mine, Give it back, Quit it!!!
I figured my one year old was up there terrorizing them and their belongings. So the next thing I heard my four year old say as he opened the door to their room,
Where’s Sasha? Is she here? Come see if it’s Sasha baby brother.
So of course my one year old storms out of the room to see if he could see Sasha. The next thing you heard was a door slam!!! 😂😂😂 Both of my older sons had plotted a way to get their baby brother away from their belongings and out of their room. We then hear the baby banging on the door and screaming to be let back in.
Okay now several emotions came over me. My first thought was “did they just trick my baby and kick him out like that?” Then laughter overcame me at the thought of “wow, my sons put their heads together to think of a way to kick the baby out, that’s pretty darn smart and clever.”
So I have learned my sons have skills in planning and plotting to get to an end goal. They literally found a way to get their brother out of the room and keep him out. This is one of the reasons I love homeschooling because I get to witness my children developing these thinking skills and see how they learn to work together in different ways. Eventually he came downstairs with me and my daughter as we did her lessons. The funny thing is I don’t blame them for doing what they did. Our baby has the habit of hitting his siblings when he doesn’t get his way AND he throws their toys down the stairs when he’s frustrated with them. We have a lot of training to do.
Thanks for reading!
All photos are my own and were taken with our Canon EOS Rebel T6
