Homeschooling With A Baby

Homeschooling with a baby is hard! No matter how you cut it, add a baby to any activity and it will most likely 1) be slower and 2) be more difficult and 3) result in more laundry. Side note: every single time we add a baby to the family I am dumbfounded at how the laundry grows exponentially. They’re such tiny people! I seriously don’t know how it works.

But, back to homeschooling. We’ve been attempting to homeschool with a baby in the house for approximately seven months now, and I have no magic formula to offer anyone else who might be contemplating the same situation other than… be flexible and give yourself lots of margin.

(Margin = extra space. Breathing room. Scheduling half an hour of work into 45 minutes of your day. Believe me, you’ll be glad you did.)

I am thankful that our boys are young enough that their sit-down-work-book-schooling doesn’t take too much time. Because, honestly, there are many days when it is hard to find focused time to help them with sit-down-work-book-school! Often, our morning goes something like this:

Baby Sister goes down for nap.

Boys and I pile onto the couch for Bible time. I open our book, read two sentences, and…

Baby Sister cries. She probably lost her pacifier, so I go upstairs to help her.

I come back, sit down, regather the boys who have wandered around the living room, and read another sentence.

Little Brother tells me he has to poop.

We go to the bathroom.

Little Brother stares at me with big blue eyes and tells me an elaborate story about Moose, Panda, and Curious George while he sits on the potty.

We go back to the living room and untangle the other two who decided to start a wrestling match on the couch.

I read two more sentences.

Middle Brother interrupts to tell me he NEEDS a drink RIGHT NOW.

Big Brother chimes in with a detailed description of the next Lego creation he plans to build.

Little Brother stares at me with big blue eyes and solemnly declares that he has to poop again.

My soul withers within me and I despair of ever finishing the darn chapter.

So, yes, school with babies and young children takes lots of time and lots of patience.

A little coffee doesn’t hurt either.

However, I have a loose schedule that has been working well for us and serving our needs so I thought I would share it! I like it because it’s simple and flexible. Hallelujah and amen!

How I Use It

– We’ve scheduled in our main subjects for only Monday through Thursday. This is everything I want to cover in a normal week.

– The paper is laminated and hangs on our fridge, so as we finish a subject for the day, I cross it off (or have Big Brother do it) with a wet-erase marker.

– On Friday, we look back at anything that was NOT completed, and do only those subjects.

Why I Like It

– It’s simple. I don’t write down details of exactly how much we’re going to cover in each subject, because that varies greatly and I adjust it on the spot based on how much time we have, how our attention span is doing, and how needy the other children are. Some days we might spend 5 minutes on math – other days 25 minutes or more. I have an idea in my head of approximately how much we should be doing in each subject, but I don’t – and can’t – abide by any strict rules at this stage of life.

– It’s flexible. I don’t have to freak out when the baby isn’t napping and we can’t get to history or copywork on Monday, because I know I’ll have a chance to catch up later in the week. Hooray for MARGIN! If, by some divine miracle, we have nothing left undone by Friday, then we have a free day. We can run errands, go on an outing, play outside, go to the park, or spend all day building Legos.

– It’s easy to use. It takes 2 seconds to scan it as I walk to the kitchen and then I’m reminded of what hasn’t been done yet. If we have a free chunk of time, I can easily decide how to fill it.

– It’s simple. Can I say this one again? Notice that I’m not scheduling these for specific times of day, because THAT would be a disaster. Baby Sister has never been a consistent napper, so I never know from day to day if I’ll be able to get five subjects done during her morning nap, or only half a page of math. We fit them in when and where we have time, and each day is a little different.

What’s Not On Here

– Our morning/Bible time. We do this each week day, all together, and even if NOTHING else from our school schedule gets done, it’s a good feeling to have that reading time together to start off our days.

– Preschool work that I do with Middle Brother and/or Little Brother. I’ve been (even more) relaxed about their schedules, because they are still very young. We try to do a bit of math or phonics work with them each day, but it doesn’t always happen.

– Art, free play, chores, baking, outside time, nature walks, lunch time read-alouds… these are all important learning times that we rotate through our weeks, but they’re not on the schedule and… *insert stage whisper* the boys don’t even know they count as school. Wink wink.

Speaking of flexibility, we’ve recently finished a couple subjects and I’ve realized that our schedule needs to change. I’ll probably be making a slightly revised one for the rest of the school year. Isn’t that how life with children goes? You get something figured out and then boom! It changes again.

Originally written March 4 2020