New Homeschooler Q & A: Part 5 - Teach kids separately?

Question: My 2-year old daughter learns by watching her brother, and I like that. Do you keep your kids together and let them bounce ideas around, or do you teach them separately?

Basically there is a 2 year gap between my two, and I have done all their stuff together except their math and grammar. 

The younger kid will bust themselves in an attempt to keep up with the older kid, and before you know it they’ll almost catch up!  The older kid will become surprised that the younger kid is catching up, and will put more effort into their work, to prevent this from happening. 

This is the ideal situation when you teach them together.  As the kids get older, it will be easier for you to teach them together.  Many curricular cater for large families so that you can teach over a range of ages.  The Sonlight curriculum I use for History and Geography (see earlier posts) has built in about a 3 year range, but you can spread it much wider, once you have got used to accommodating the differences in the kids.

Aussie Kim

Here is what we do. Histories, sciences and foreign languages, etc. are taught together. Of course, the older ones are expected to perform at a higher level and are given supplemental readings. Math and language arts are done separately.

My middle child is largely responsible for her younger brother acquiring his pre-school and kindergarten skills. A born mother, she would play school with him while I taught her older brother or did house work. She taught him colors, shapes and quite a few of his letters and numbers. I was delighted to let her do it. He was entertained and learning, two for the price of one.

The gap between my oldest and youngest is five years, but, perhaps because they are both boys, they have a lot of the same interests. This has led to a great many extracurricular (not taught my mom) learning activities.

LA Sue 

Comments

[Marie]

I'm glad to see it can work that way. I always thought it must, but I read on a homeschooling mom's blog about how she would distract or occupy the younger child with toys and games so she could work with the older one alone, and that seemed like a missed opportunity.