Greetings Eddies!
In my role as the “OpenEd newsletter guy,” I occasionally get emails asking for advice.
This week’s came from a mom – I’ll call her M.:
How do I homeschool one kindergartener while having two young kids, ages three and two, and being pregnant in the first trimester with my fourth?
I am afraid of feeling overrun or not doing it right – or messing up in a way that makes my child hate learning instead of loving it. I suppose I have a fear of the unknown.
Usually I forward these emails to someone with more knowledge – like a member of our support team, or a teacher in the learning division.
But in this case, I actually felt somewhat qualified to answer from personal experience.
A bit of background…
My wife and I are “homeschooling” our four kids, the oldest of whom is going into first grade. I put “homeschooling” in quotes because, like most families in OpenEd, we’re doing something more slippery than the traditional classification would suggest.
Putting aside the fact that my youngest three kids are not even school-aged, even my oldest is doing a lot less “school” at this age than her counterparts in the traditional K-12 system.
We share the increasingly widespread view that was articulated by figures like Charlotte Mason, upheld more recently by researchers like Peter Gray, and put best by Mister Rogers:
Who knew that Mister Rogers’ real first name was Fred?
So, for much of the day, my kids play – outside and inside. They help with chores and learn to count by collecting chicken eggs.
Almost all of the formal instruction we do comes from one book: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Each lesson takes about fifteen minutes. They clicked for my daughter, and now my son is about 30 lessons in.
We also keep a couple of Singapore Math books around, which our kids love and call “activity books.” Once your kids are reading, they can do these fairly independently and work at their own pace.
And that’s pretty much the whole program.
I shared this with M., hoping it would relieve some of the anxiety around not doing enough to set her kids up for success.
She’s certainly not alone in her concerns.
I recently discovered that there are more Google searches for “kindergarten homeschool curriculum” than for 1st through 8th grade combined. Ironically, the grade level parents research most is the very one that requires the least structured curriculum.
A time will come when we will need to be more intentional about how we nurture each of our kids’ particular interests, strengths, and struggles. But we are content to focus on the already-large task of managing a full house of four developing young persons (to borrow Charlotte Mason's frame) and let tomorrow worry about itself.
Sarah MacKenzie, founder of Read-Aloud Revival, asked veteran homeschool mothers what they would do differently, and they all said pretty much the same thing:
“Just do less. You're trying to do too much.”
But as MacKenzie notes, this advice can feel frustrating. Doing “less” can look very different in each family. Her five habits of happy homeschoolers provide a framework that allows you to figure out the specifics based on general principles. The short version: stop comparing yourself to some non-existent “ideal” that you see online.
Her most practical and specific advice is the family read-aloud – one of the few activities where kids of a variety of ages can all be engaged simultaneously. She recommends picking a book slightly above your oldest's reading level (since kids comprehend well above their reading level), and letting the little ones wander in and out.
Audiobooks are also fair game. You can grab them free via Libby with a library card, or stream up to 15 hours a month on Spotify Premium.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention our podcast featuring Matt Bowman, father of five and founder of OpenEd: Stop Overscheduling Your Child's Learning.
Here’s his formula for the “minimum viable school day” in busy seasons of life, which can apply even as your kids get older:
"If kids are doing 20 minutes of math, 20 minutes of reading, 20 minutes of writing a day, that's sufficient."
The corollary is an hour of active recess between blocks to prep the brain for focus. For kindergarten, you can trim that even further: skip formal math and writing most days and double down on the family reading. Science and history come in through the books that catch their attention.
For M.’s situation, I recommend finding a single reading resource for her kindergartener, and scheduling 15 minutes a day with it to start. A child who can read gains independence during the hours when you’re busy with the younger kids. Soon enough, she’ll be reading to her younger siblings.
For the rest of August, we'll be doing a deep dive into the topic of reading, so stay tuned!
Also, if you want to be featured in a future “mailbag” edition, don't be shy – hit reply!
– Charlie (the OpenEd Newsletter Guy)