Schooling at Home? Here's a crash course.

There are many reasons you may need to temporarily school your children at home. You may have an extended emergency situation, due to natural disaster or community quarantine.  Sometimes schools are able to assist with materials and assignments, but what do you do if you're on your own?

You don't have to choose between letting your child play video games all day and fighting to make them do worksheets.  Learning can be fun!

Seasoned homeschoolers offer this advice:

1. DO NOT try to recreate the school atmosphere at home.  There is no need for a designated school room, a student desk, and certainly no need for endless seatwork.

2. DO NOT think your child needs to put in as many hours for home school as he would in a regular classroom.  Teaching a single child (or even three) takes far less time than it does to meet the individual needs of twenty or thirty children.

3. Enjoy the freedom to make your own schedule, and meet the needs of your own family.  Not every subject needs to taught 5 days a week, and many homeschoolers thrive on a 4-day schedule.  Unstructured "down time" is essential to children developing their own interests, creativity, and initiative.

You may have multiple children to work with, at different levels  That can be challenging, but doable.  The trick is to plan ahead so that one child's high-parent-involvement activity does not coincide with another's.  In other words, try to schedule your students' work so that one is doing something independently while you are working one-on-one with another.  It is often helpful to work with the neediest child first, and then get her started with something she can do independently before working with the next one.  Some group things, like a parent reading to the children, or making a batch of cookies, can be done all together.  Very little ones can play nearby in a secure and supervised area.

A variety of activities is recommended, in short segments. 

A planning template

Here is a typical planning template, and a sample filled out.  The sample is for an imaginary Mom who has a 2nd grade son and a preK daughter, but the principle of staggering the schedule is the same for older kids and multiple children, too.

The main thing is to plan ahead.  But "best laid plans" may often go awry, so keep a sense of humor and don't worry if only a fraction of your plans are accomplished.  The important thing is that you are together and interacting with each other.  Learning will happen!

A sample plan, filled out.  Color coding
makes it easy to see who does what.

If you don't already have a packet of materials from your child's school, there are still plenty of activities that can keep brains going. Here are a few home- and classroom-tested ideas to get you started, that require little or no advance preparation.

Language Arts

• Reading  If there are books at home, students can read aloud to adults, siblings or pets.  They can record themselves reading stories.  To help them process what they are reading, it may be helpful to ask questions about what the characters might be feeling, or what they might do next.  Older students can read and follow recipes or directions for crafts and other projects.  No access to a library?  Try online sources like these.
• Writing  Students can write stories, comic strips, or diaries.  They can start a blog.  They can write a letter to Grandma, directions for an activity, or ideas for an upcoming vacation.  They can copy poems and illustrate them.  They can write a play and act it out live, with puppets or with toys.  You might want to video the performance for later enjoyment.  Enchantedlearning.com has a wealth of reading and writing resources as well.
• Spelling/handwriting Have a family spelling bee; play a rhyming game; practice writing letters/words with fingers in a pan of baking soda, sand or flour, with fingerpaint, or in shaving cream smeared on a table top; form letters with play dough; write words outside with sidewalk chalk; spell words with magnetic letters on a cookie sheet.
• Literature  Reading picture books, short stories, poetry, and even classic children's novels aloud to your children can increase their vocabulary and attention span.  Tired of your old books?  Try some old classics like Anne of Green Gables from free ebook sites.   Listening to audiobooks is something the whole family can enjoy.  Librivox is a free resource for audiobooks that will play on your phone or laptop.

Math

• Number sense/Arithmetic  Many board games involve counting as the students move their markers around the board.  That counts as math for the younger set.
  
  Does your child need to work on addition or multiplication facts? Play a card game together: using a normal deck of cards, discard the face cards and deal out 5 number cards per player.  Choose a target number, such as "12," and play a Go-Fish style game where you form sets of cards that add up to the target number. Player with most sets of 12 when you run out of cards wins. Older students can make up more elaborate sets, using multiple operations, such as with cards 5, 8, and Ace: 5+8-1 = 12.
  
  If you have a foam number puzzle, let your little ones use the numbers and some washable paint to stamp each number, 0-10 or 0-20 (or further), onto a separate piece of paper and place them in order to make a giant number line.  Make a game out of it by having them roll dice or spin a spinner to add or subtract numbers, facing the higher end of the number line as they walk forward to "add" and backward to "subtract.".  Or make a smaller number line for Lego people or other small toys to "walk" back and forth on.
  
  Students can understand and practice place value by gluing dry beans onto popsicle sticks or strips of cardboard.  Have them make count out ten beans for each stick.  If you have enough beans, make 20-50 sticks so you can assemble some 100-bean squares: glue ten sticks, with ten beans per stick, onto a square of cardboard.  Then use the squares, sticks and beans to model 3-digit numbers: for example, show your child how to write "146" to represent one hundred-bean square, plus 4 ten-bean sticks, plus six loose beans.  Try different combinations of squares, sticks and beans.  Then see if she can make the correct model when you write the three digit number.  (To model addition or subtraction with regrouping, you simply build the given numbers and substitute ten sticks for a hundred-bean square, or vice versa, as needed.)
  
  Have students go with you to the grocery store and keep track of what is being spent.  At home, they can use a store circular or catalog to plan a shopping list within a given budget.  Let students follow a recipe to bake cookies from scratch.  Older students can test their understanding of fractions by doubling or halving a recipe.
  
  Measuring anything can be fun, too.  Have the kids guess how many units inches/feet/meters/centimeters, pounds/ounces/kilos/grams, quarts/cups/ounces/liters/mililiters (or whatever) something will measure, and then measure it. All the toys, or everything in the kitchen, or Dad's shoes. Or make the unit something silly, like the length of a coathanger or a doll's shoe.  How many doll-shoes long is your child's shoe?
  
  A clothes hanger, ruler or dowel, some wire or string, tape and paper cups could also become a balance scale.  You can find multiple YouTube tutorials for making one out of whatever you have.  How many paper clips will equal the mass of a grape?
• Geometry  Students of all ages can play with tangrams, making pictures out of different shapes.  Challenge older students to redesign a room in the house by measuring and drawing redesign a scale floorplan on graph paper and rearranging scaled cutouts of the furniture.
• Pre-algebra  Older students can make a number line using negative and positive integers, -10 to 10, and play a game as described above. For negative numbers, players must face the opposite direction, because positive and negatives are opposites.  So, if a player is on 5 and must subtract negative three, he first turns to face the negative (opposite) side of the number line, and then walks three steps backward to subtract, ending at positive 8.
  
  Use dry beans and plastic Easter eggs to help your child model and solve equations with variables.  For example, the equation 2x + 4 = 10, uses 20 beans and 2 eggs.  Each egg hides 3 beans.  Divide a piece of paper in half. On one half of the paper, place the two eggs-with-beans and four loose beans; on the other half, the remaining ten loose beans.  Challenge your student to figure out how many beans are in each egg, if each egg contains the same number of beans, and both sides of the paper have equal beans.  Show him how it can be proven by eliminating four loose beans on each side, and dividing the remaining 6 loose beans into two groups (of three beans) to match the two mystery eggs.  You can even read the equation, "Two 'eggs' plus four equals ten."  (The solution, then, is 'eggs' = three.) Make a game of it, having your student make up and model an equation, which you have to solve, and then switch.  

Science is all about observation and investigation.  Develop your child'd curiosity by using every day things as a starting point.

• Biology  Have students go outside and look for signs of spring.  They can record the daily changes in plants, observing the budding of leaves on a tree branch, or flowers blooming, and drawing what they see each day.  A dry, uncooked popcorn kernel, pinto or lima bean can be sprouted in a jar and measured each day.  Students can research plant growth and development in books or online.
  
  Do you know the parts of a flower, and how fruit is formed? Have your child study a flower from your yard and draw its parts.  Use books or online resources like this one to label the parts.
  
  Got eggs?  Have students investigate how eggs form in a birds body. Google "How does a chicken make an egg?" for several fascinating resources. Older students might learn how a fertile egg differs from an infertile egg, and how a chick develops in a fertile egg.
• Chemistry  Boil a purple cabbage.  The resulting colored water will change color in the presence of starch!  Drop it on bread, potatoes, sugar, salt, flour, cheese, cookies, meat-- which foods indicate starch?  Have students predict and test other foods.
  
  For older students: What happens when baking soda is mixed with vinegar?  Why?  What about lemon juice? Orange juice?  Buttermilk?  How is baking soda different from baking powder?  Why?  What is the purpose of baking soda or baking powder in a cookie or cake?  Why is baking soda + cream of tartar a substitute for baking powder?  Find a cookie recipe, such as peanut butter cookies, that uses baking soda.  What is the acid in the recipe that reacts with the baking soda?  Bake the cookies. Eat them.
• Physics  What makes objects float or sink?  Fill a sink or tub with water and challenge your children to predict, and then test, which of their (waterproof) toys will sink or float.  Can they make a paper boat that will float?  Can they take two identically-sized pieces of aluminum foil, and by changing their shape, make one sink and one float?  Try various designs of aluminum foil boats-- which shapes will hold the most pennies before sinking?  Why?
  
  Got Match Box cars or Hot Wheels?  How does the height of the car when it is released affect how far it travels down the track?
• Astronomy  Watch a sunrise and a sunset.  Why are they on opposite sides?  Chart the phases of the moon.  Stay up late and look at the night sky.  Use binoculars or a telescope.  Download a star chart app.  What constellations can you identify?  How do you tell a planet from a star?  What is the difference?  Which is closer?
• Geology  Start a rock collection.  How are the rocks different? What kinds are they? How did they form? What minerals can you identify in the rocks? Look at local land forms-- identify any lakes, mountains, streams, plateaus, plains.  For older students: What effects do the land features have on life in the area (water availability, mineral and other natural resources, what plants can grow, weather patterns). How does this affect people who might live in the area now, or how they lived in the past?

Social Studies

• Cultures  What traditions are important to your family?  Do you always have a particular dessert at birthdays, for example, or sing a particular song?  Investigate your family history.  From what places did your ancestors come?  What were some of the foods they might have eaten, languages they spoke, traditions they observed?  Do you continue any of these?  What are some of the cultures represented by the ancestors of other friends and family members?  When reading a book, watching a movie, even celebrating a holiday, students can learn about different ways people live and how traditions can be important to a larger group of people.
• History  If students have been reading anything (fiction or non-fiction) that has a specific time period setting, be it Little House, The Titanic or The Red Badge of Courage, they can investigate how people lived in that time period, what they ate, what they wore, how they got around.  They can make a time line to illustrate what was happening before, after, and during the events they are reading about.  Check out the link below for duckster.com for some great information and activities.
• Geography  If you have a globe or world map, children can use it to find the places they read about or  hear about on the news.  If you have both a globe and a map, they can compare the relative sizes of the countries.  See if they can explain which representation is more accurate. Using a globe or map, discuss how nearness to water, mountains, and the equator might affect weather patterns and/or lifestyles of the people who live in a certain place.
  
  Have students make a map of their neighborhood from memory, and compare it to the same area as shown on Google Maps.
  
  Older students can research and plan an imaginary trip to a place they would like to visit. (For more of a challenge, give them an imaginary budget!)  Here is a free website with fun interactive geography games.

Art

• Painting/drawing  Finger paint, watercolor, crayons, pastels, pencils, markers-- whatever they have-- let them create! There are drawing tutorial sites for kids here. Older students can investigate how to use perspective, shading, texture, proportion, and other techniques with YouTube channels such as Circle Line Art School.
• Sculpture  Play dough (homemade or store bought), modeling clay, Sculpey clay, play sand, cookie dough, mud, snow-- there are many things a child can use to create 3D figures.  Children can also design and build fun things out of boxes, paper, cans, foil, string, wire, tape, cotton balls, whatever is available.  Here is my favorite free-to-print papercraft site.  Mobiles and origami, sock dolls, puppets, and homemade paper dolls are other things to try.
• Art History Museums and libraries are the obvious places to look to investigate artists and art forms over the millennia, but online tools can be fun, too.  Students can investigate art from a certain location (Egypt, Texas, Congo, Australia), a time period (Middle Ages, prehistory, 1960's), or a theme (war, motherhood, landscapes, religion, science fiction, cowboys).  They might want to make a scrapbook of images, cover their walls in prints, write a report, make a time line, or record their own video lecture.  You can "visit" many museums through online virtual tours, and some even have pdfs of their collections  to print out and color.

Music

• Singing  Younger kids may enjoy learning folk songs, nursery rhyme songs, or any of the songs here.  And anyone can try their hand at writing new lyrics to a familiar tune-- funny words or serious, words that explain the latest science lesson or help them remember states and capitals.  Then stage a family sing-along challenge!
• Instrumental music  Make skakers out of cans or plastic tubs filled with rice/beans, tambourines out of pie plates or paper plates, drums out of coffee cans or oatmeal containers. Crank up some music and use the homemade instruments to keep the rhythm.  Fill several water glasses with different amounts of water and tap the glasses with a spoon to play a tune. Try out any instruments you have in the house-- toy piano, keyboard, recorder, harmonica, flute. Can you play a tune?  Older kids can try video tutorials such as YouCanPlayIt to learn new songs.
• Music appreciation Learning about musicians and music forms throughout history can be fascinating!  Students can investigate music from a certain location (Italy, New Orleans, Congo, American West), a time period (Middle Ages, 1920's, Renaissance), styles (jazz, blues, rock, Baroque) or a theme (movies, love, cowboys).  They might want to make a scrapbook of composers, cover their walls in sheet music, write a report, make a time line, or record their own music performance.

Physical Education

• Fitness  Ride bikes, jump rope, jump on a trampoline, play hopscotch, climb trees, climb on monkey bars, swing, dance, kick a soccer ball, run, walk, hike, swim.
• Fine/Gross Motor Skills  Shoot hoops, shoot marbles, play jacks, throw bean bags, play ring toss or horseshoes, build a fort.
• Teamwork/Rules  Play freeze tag, tug of war, board games, outdoor games with balls, indoor games with balloons, play tennis or badminton.

Click here for a huge list of free online resources covering prek-high school.
Duckster.com is a free, multi-subject educational site for kids.

Enchantedlearning.com has a boat-load of printables and other online resources.  Some of its site is useful even without a membership, but for full-time elementary homeschoolers, the additional resources are well worth the $20 membership fee.  It is offering free temporary access for students whose schools are closed due to the COVID-19 virus.

Educating your own children, or even helping them keep up with learning after you get home from work, may not be something you went to school for, but after all, you are the expert on your children, and one of their greatest advocates.  You may be more than ready to send them back to their classrooms when school resumes, but in the meantime, you can do this.   And have fun doing it!

Custom Homeschooling on a Shoestring

While homeschooling is a slight tangent from my usual topic, it's the time of year when some parents are seriously considering whether it might be a beneficial option for their children.

There are many reasons people might consider homeschooling, and many ways of accomplishing it. This post is for those of you who have decided that, while homeschool is the best option for your family's needs, your budget is limited.  You may have researched various homeschool packages from Sonlight, Timberdoodle, Alpha-Omega, Calvert, etc., and found the prices out of reach.  Perhaps you looked into the free online public school options such as K-12 or Connections Academy, but don't feel that these would suit your family's needs.  You're thinking DIY is the way to go.  So now you're wondering, "Where do we start?"

You don't need some high-dollar curriculum package (although those are nice!), or even the free online public school set-up, to give your child a great education.  What you really need is time to invest in your child.  First, there is the time to plan and find the materials you need, but most importantly is the time you actually spend with your child.  You will be the one to know if she has trouble with her multiplication facts, or if she needs more work on handwriting, or is so excited about geology that you could spend a whole year reading, writing and learning about rocks.

Here's a basic DIY tutorial:

1. Investigate the homeschooling requirements of your state (assuming U.S. readers here, but whatever laws apply).  They vary considerably.  For example, in Virginia you may be required to submit a course description at the beginning of every year and evidence of progress at the end of every year, whereas in Arizona you simply file an Intent to Homeschool once.  There may also be required subjects, standardized tests, or other boxes to check.  You can find this information online ("homeschool requirements in the state of ___") or by calling your state department of education. Another good source is the  Home School Legal Defense Association, which has the latest information for each state.

2. Map out what you want your child to learn.  Depending on your goals for and philosophy of homeschooling, you may have specific ideas of what you want your child to study.  Do you want her to fall in love with literature, develop an understanding of the world, learn a foreign language, excel in math and science, think critically, write well, express herself through the arts?  What about this specific school year-- what period(s) of history do you want to study, and how much geography?  What areas of science, and what works of literature?  Art? Music?

If that sounds intimidating, don't worry.  Common Core aside, there are no set rules about what a child must cover at any certain grade level.  There are topics and approaches that are more appropriate than others, of course, for each age and stage.

You might find age-appropriate ideas in What Your ___ Grader Needs to Know, or your local school's curriculum, or a classical homeschooling plan such as amblesideonline.org.  If you like the idea of unit studies,  Five in a Row is a popular program that builds a week's worth of academic learning around classic children's literature.  There is even a program based on the Little House series. Discovering what you like, and what you don't, will make it that much easier to create your own custom homeschool.

Consider what your child's individual needs are, and where his strengths/weaknesses and interests lie. For example, if your 4th grader is a struggling reader, you might want to offer many high-interest, low difficulty books to build up his fluency instead of texts that might cause frustration. If your child is obsessed with Pokémon, walruses, or vacuum cleaners, there are ways to incorporate these interests into math, science, and just about any other subject.  Bear in mind that the older the child is, the more important it is to include his input in this planning stage.

The idea of what and how much you might want to cover in a year is called the "scope" of your lesson plans.  Educators call the complete list of what you plan to teach, and the order you plan to teach it, the "scope and sequence."  Depending on your state laws, this may actually be a required document that you submit to the officials.  Obviously, if you are using a commercial curriculum for one or more subjects that is already planned out, your scope and sequence will be pre-determined and you don't have to mess with it.  However, if you're coming up with your own plan, most people find it helpful to write out some kind of parameters to keep in mind as they go through their year.  By no means is it set in stone; the beauty of homeschooling is its flexibility.

Linked below is a very basic scope and sequence for a fictional 4th grader.  It is based on a 3-term school year, so assuming a traditional 36-week school year, that would be about 12 weeks each.  You may prefer to break your year down into 9-week, 6-week, or semester (18-week) segments. Whatever works for you is great!  Please note that this example is only one way to write out the information; you might do it differently.  For instance, some of my entries are written in unnecessarily vague educational jargon just because it's late as I type this and I'm too tired to use real English.  And there are also more subjects listed than a real 4th grader would be likely to need.  It could also be that I'm missing one that you plan to include, such as vocabulary or geography.  But I think you can get the general idea.  In case you want to try it yourself, I'm including a printable template:
sample scope and sequence
scope and sequence template

3. Determine your resources.  If you want your child to learn history and geography, do you have anything now that you could use to teach that?  You may already have certain educational materials collected at home: maps and globes, books on history and science, fiction books, educational DVD's, games, equipment and supplies. When we began homeschooling, we already had large wall maps of the world and the U.S.A., and a generic Illustrated World History Encyclopedia from the Barnes and Noble bargain shelf.  The book was enough to introduce each historical topic that we studied, and we used the maps to locate each country or event site as we got to it.  You might have other items, or none at all.  But for each subject you teach, there may be more available resources than you realize.

These may be community offerings: people you know who are experts in a particular field, libraries, museums, historical sites, theater groups and symphonies, universities, extra-curricular clubs, parks and recreation classes, churches, or homeschool support groups.  Maybe the local parks and rec offers a children's art class, or the children's museum downtown has some great science exhibits.  And there is a wealth of online educational resources, and even educational apps.

But what about actual curriculum? There might be a math text or spelling program that you have heard of and are dying to try out.  Ask around!  Homeschooling friends are often happy to loan out reusable curriculum that their children have finished with.  If you join a co-op or homeschool support group, there are often opportunities to share items.  Used bookstores, Ebay, Facebook, Craigslist, Amazon and online forums are also places that can help you score a ganga deal.  Be sure to do your research and know what the cost of the new item would be before shelling out anything for the used version.

 What if you know what you want to teach, but don't know how to start?  There are all kinds of books and websites available to help you.  Ruth Beechick's You Can Teach Your Child Successfully has helped countless families on their homeschooling journey.  Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a classic that gives parents a sequential, simple method of teaching their child to read.  Another favorite of mine is Reading Reflex, which I have discussed before.  There are articles on websites (here's an example), and online programs such as starfall, readingbear, bookadventure, and readtheory for reading, and Khan Academy for math.  A good librarian can help you find what's available on the shelves, and Googling "free reading curriculum" or something similar will get you started online.

It's a good idea to make a list of available resources before you need them.  Here's an example of a resource list, and a template you might use to create your own:
sample homeschool resources
homeschool resources template

You might notice that the resource form has a space for an electronic scheduling system. I have used both Homeschool Tracker and Homeschool Planner over the years; while not absolutely necessary, these programs allow the parent to keep a neat and immediately updatable record of everything their child has done, which can be invaluable if they ever need a transcript or some other documentation of their work.

4.  Divide and conquer.  Once you have gathered your resources, use your scope and sequence to come up with a daily/weekly plan.  Think of the old riddle, "How do you eat an elephant?  A bite at a time!"  Your scope and sequence is the elephant; your daily plan is the bite at a time.  So for every subject, look at your resources and determine how each could be reasonably spread out over the designated time period.  For example, if you want your child to listen to fifteen Newberry award books plus a collection of short stories and a book of poetry over the year, you might plan to cover five novels, a short story and twenty poems per 12-week term.  The daily plan would then be determined by the amount of reading your child can comfortably listen to in a single sitting.  Depending on the length of the chapters, you might decide to read and discuss a chapter a day of the novel along with a poem, or a short story and a poem.  A long chapter might be split over two days, while a couple of short chapters might be read together.  (Incidentally, reading aloud to your child is an excellent way to develop her vocabulary and listening skills, but a follow-up discussion of what you are reading is critical so she doesn't begin to tune you out.)

For history, you might work on one historical event per week.  On Monday you could read about it in a history encyclopedia and locate the appropriate places on a map; the next day your child might watch a You-tube clip about it.  Wednesday might involve a hands-on project.  On Thursday you might find more information about the event on child-appropriate website, and Friday you might have your child draw a small representative symbol on a timeline at the appropriate date.  By the way, if your literary selections are related to the history being studied at the time, your child can experience a greater understanding of the people and events.  For example, you might select titles such as Johnny Tremaine or American Girl's Felicity while studying the American Revolution.  Adding in special activities such as museum visits,  listening to music of the period, cooking and craft activities, and dramatic play also increase engagement.

Your math resource(s) may be online or text-based.  If you are using something like Khan Academy, you won't have a certain number of pages to assign, so you would set a daily time limit or a certain number of activities instead.  A twenty- to thirty-minute session of math might be as much as your child can absorb in a sitting, but you can plan to do a lesson introducing a concept (such as two-digit addition) early in the day, and then provide time for independent practice later on.  A third, short session of fact drill (using flash cards or online games) might be scheduled during another part of the day.

Older students who are highly motivated, but prefer a less structured style, might work better given a weekly assignment list instead of a daily one.  We found a daily assignment list worked well for us; my kids felt a sense of accomplishment as they completed each item.  When they dumped me for public high school, they hit the ground running and never once had to be reminded to do their homework.

As you plan each day or week, notice that there are at least three different types of school activities.  There are the oral activities, such as read-aloud and discussion items; the guided practice where you are actively helping your child with hands-on or pencil-and-paper work; and there is the independent work in which your child is working on an assignment by himself.  Silent reading, math problems, handwriting practice, and computer-based activities would fit in this category.  I found that having an even balance of all three types of learning worked best for us.

What is a good amount of time to spend on school each day?  It depends on the age of the child, of course, but it is unlikely to be anywhere close to what is needed in the classroom.  So much time there is spent on crowd control (lining up, getting supplies, transitioning from one activity to the next) and administrative tasks (collecting and passing out papers, taking attendance, making announcements)-- besides the fact that teaching one-on-one is far more efficient than one-on-twenty-five-- that finding your child done by noon should be a normal occurrence at the elementary level.  By middle school, my kids were more likely to stretch things out until 4 or even 5pm, but that included a break in the day for band or music lessons, cooking their own breakfast and lunch, and a pretty heavy load of academics.

Here is a sample week that gives ideas for doable daily assignments in a number of subjects.  Bear in mind that you would probably not want to start out doing all of this at once!  And every family's/child's needs are different; you might prioritize, add or eliminate different subjects based on your own scope and sequence.

sample homeschool week
homeschool week templateht

And a sample daily schedule, showing how everything might work in detail:

sample day's schedule
homeschool day template

Note: if you have more than one child that needs to be scheduled, and also want to figure out how to get your stuff done, I heartily recommend Managers of their Homes as a way to keep everything organized.  I've seen it used on Amazon for less than $10, but it's well worth the $25 price brand new. Here is a MOTH- inspired schedule for a family including a 9, 5, and 1-year old:

sample schedule for multiple children
multiple children schedule template

5. Adjust as you go.  Remember, the most common mistake new homeschoolers make is trying to do too much.  Many veterans recommend starting out slowly-- just a few subjects the first week, then gradually adding more in until you find your balance.  And don't try to plan too far in advance.  By using your scope and sequence, you can focus on planning just the chunk you need.  When I was doing this, I rarely scheduled out more than six weeks ahead in any kind of detail.  And what I did write was in pencil, always subject to change.

I'll leave it at that for now.

Free On-Line Interactive Learning

Sorry, this is just a screen shot, not a real video.

 Want to learn math?  Try Khan Academy.  Want to learn a new language?  Check out Duolingo.

Both of these sites are well-thought out, free and interactive, offering user-friendly courses that guide you (or your student) through learning new material at an individualized pace.

Khan Academy is a non-profit educational site that offers K-12 math all the way through Calculus; it even has a math level with basic counting, addition, and subtraction.  It probably works best for kids who already have the basics down, however.   The site includes video lessons, practice problems (with hints and answers) and mastery challenge tests, and allows students to earn points and badges as they work through various levels.  It can be used for supplementary help (when homework just doesn't make sense), review, or as the basis for a homeschool math curriculum.  Parents, teachers, or tutors can create an account and add their children in classes so that they can monitor their progress, or the students can work on their own either using their own account or just accessing the lessons as needed the website.

If the wedsite is used as the basis for a homeschool math course, I would recommend the student be provided with additional practice on paper, a variety of drills, as well as real-world math activities.  For example, a student learning his multiplication facts would likely need practice outside of the website, whether flashcards, games, songs, or whatever matched her learning style.  A student learning to measure would need actual hands-on tools-- rulers, measuring cups, and scales-- and real things to measure.  Learning about angles would require having an actual compass to measure actual angles.  Even the occasional pencil-and-paper worksheet (free to download from many sites) helps the brain process the material in a way that the computer screen can't always match.

Duolingo provides instruction in your choice of 16 different languages.  (Mostly European-- there is Russian, Turkish and even Esperanto, but sorry, no Chinese or Arabic at this point.) After creating an account, you can also download an app for your mobile device for lessons on-the-go.  You can start from the beginner level, or take a placement test to see where you should start.  Your progress is tracked through many different lessons.  You can set daily goals of 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes of daily practice.  As you progress through the lessons, you earn "lingots" to spend in the virtual store.  From the look of the progress chart on my screen, the lessons appear to cover the equivalent of a first-year course-- possibly two years at the high school level-- in a foreign language, at least as far as grammar is concerned.  I can't tell at this point how much vocabulary is involved.  Of course, if i were using the site as the basis for a homeschool foreign language course, I would supplement with additional reading, writing, listening and speaking opportunities.  Teacher's Discovery has a wealth of resources for the foreign language student, including beginning level readers, dvd's, music, games, etc.

I have just started using the Duolingo site myself, but it reminds me somewhat of Rosetta Stone in that it begins with pictures to identify.  Unlike RS, however, the lessons have you translating instead of learning by immersion.  For example, in the first few lessons of RS, you would hear the word in the target language along with a picture, and then later you would select the correct picture when you saw the word.  With Duolingo, I was asked to choose the word that meant "the woman," from several pictures labeled in the target language.  When I clicked on the correct photo, I heard the word.  Later, it asked me to translate the phrase and I typed in "the woman,"  then to label the picture, and I typed in the correct phrase in the target language. Obviously, this would not be the ideal program for someone who is a careless speller, but it was kind of fun.  And I like that the grammar is explicitly taught-- the lack of grammar is a common complaint with Rosetta Stone, or at least it was when I was using it years ago.  (Many people prefer RS precisely because it uses the immersion approach, which is the natural way that young children absorb language.  As an older learner, however, i like to know the grammar behind what i am learning so I can connect what I'm learning to what i already understand. Different strokes for different folks.)

So if you are looking for enrichment opportunities for you or your child, you might give these a try!  They are free and fun.