How to homeschool older kids when you have little ones

In an ideal world we would have perfectly behaved babies and toddlers and an hour or two to dedicate to homeschool older kids. Another great fantasy would be if the baby and toddler would nap simultaneously. Let’s be real though, if you score the perfect nap scenario your first priority probably won’t be homeschooling. That’s when you do the 30 things on your to do list that you’ve been dying to work on all day because you’re sick of staring at messes. So what do we do?

Find what your kids can work on independently

We’re a fan of online curriculums that kids can complete independently for the most part. We just switched to Power Homeschool (Acellus) and my 10 year old can do most of it on her own in a quiet spot in the house, I help with science and math. Sometimes it’s easier to homeschool older kids independently, especially when it comes down to their favorite subjects.

Turn on background music

I turn on lofi music on YouTube because there are normally cute cartoon pictures in the background. It helps put everyone in a somewhat calming mood so the little ones can play independently while I help with tricky math problems. (Shoutout to the Chillhop station on Youtube, for getting us through many lessons) We’ve become so accustomed to this that my oldest daughter now listens to this music when drawing or reading in her room.

Homeschool when everyone is home

Sometimes I just can’t find the time to work on homeschool one on one, so we wait until my husband is home. Then I can help out, or we can homeschool as a whole family. My daughter loves working on our unit studies as a family. My husband is a much better narrator than I am.

Take an unschooling approach

We consider chores school too. Especially since we have dogs, cats, goats, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. There’s always something to do and hands on learning can be so much more enlightening than sitting down and figuring out that math problem. Trust me, we have lots of real life math problems on the homestead.

Give yourself grace

It’s hard to have a routine when you have babies and toddlers. There are always good days and bad days, and we don’t have to do it all everyday. The other day my husband got home from work and all I could think of was the fact that I didn’t feel like I accomplished anything. The kids were fed and happy, we got through the day, that’s an accomplishment. I needed to give myself grace, just like I have to give our homeschool schedule some grace.

There’s no right answer and it’s not always easy, but it’s just for this season and things do get easier. In fact things are easier now that the baby is 7 months old than they were when she was a newborn.