How to USe SchoolhouseTeachers and Homeschool Multiple Grade Levels at Once
Are you planning your Homeschool Year and getting frustrated with trying to figure out how to homeschool different ages and grades at the same time?
When you have several different grades you are teaching at the same time you will deal with different attention spans, reading levels, comprehension levels, and even learning styles.
Wouldn't it be nice if your homeschool plan could include the whole family and offer a rich learning experience for each member of the family without having to use a different resource for each child?
I'm going to walk you through the online curriculum site SchoolhouseTeachers.com and show you how you can use this resource to serve your whole family.
We will talk about what is SchoolhouseTeachers.com, what it offers each age range, and how you can set it up for your family.
Read Next: The Extra Benefits of Homeschooling
What is SchoolhouseTeachers and why am I recommending it?
SchoolhouseTeachers.com is a curriculum hub from the creators of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. It contains hundreds of homeschool courses for grades preK through 12th grade and also enrichment resources for parents and the whole family.
To put it simply SchoolHouseTeachers.com is an online hub of most everything you'll need for your homeschool journey.
Here's a nice list of some of what you get with Schoolhouseteachers.com
- One membership for the whole family
- 100's of high-quality, self paced online courses
- New! School Boxes that include curriculum guides, links, weekly schedules, and daily checklists for each subject
- Your Complete Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool to 12th grade
- Special Needs
- Includes topics outside of the scope of the main subject areas
- mom section with meal plans, menus, and organization
- Planning tools with Scope & Sequence, Lesson Plans, Custom Schedule Builder, free Applecore Account (Silver with monthly and Gold with annual membership)
- Smartmama Planner
- and lots more!
Schoolhouseteachers.com is a great online tool for homeschooling that includes hundreds of courses and resources in different styles and formats. The courses cover every grade from preschool to high school. There are resources for Special Needs and so much support you can't go wrong. There are also several resources for parents and what you might call free time such as videos and ebooks to watch and read.
Read on to find out how you can use Schoolhouseteachers.com to homeschool multiple grade levels at one time.
Combine Several Subjects Together or combined learning
One of the first things you want to do when organizing to streamline homeschooling several grades at once is to combine subjects.
Some subjects that are ideal for combining in your homeschool are History, Science, Foreign Language, Bible, and Reading.
Your students can learn these subjects together but still do extra activities, such as worksheets, reports, or even experiments, at their own level if necessary.
One way you can do this is in Schoolhouseteachers.com is…
- Start by choosing the courses your children will be studying in the coming (or current) school year. For example World History.
- Browse through the courses by Subject and choose history. Find an applicable course.
- Each course lists what grades it is created for. e.g….
- Choose the course that covers the ages you want to combine. Schoolhouseteachers.com members can go to the Courses by Grade Level Chart to get a quick view of courses that cover several grades.
- Bookmark the course you're interested. This Bookmarking is a feature in SchoolhouseTeachers that you can access in the Lesson portion of each course. Your Bookmarks will then all be available in your Membership Toolbox.
Set Up Things for Your Independent Learner
If you have older children in your homeschool they can be very independent in their studies. This helps free you up to do more hands on learning with your younger students.
Once you have a good idea of how and at what time your children do their best independent work you can set up your homeschool day around their independent learning. Layout your schedule for your child's school day and they take it from there.
Some families with multiple age learners begin the homeschool day with independent work and then do the combined courses in the afternoon as a family affair.
Other homeschoolers may begin the day together and do combined learning in the afternoons.
Use Unit Studies to teach several ages at once
Did you know that Schoolhouseteachers.com also offers Unit Studies? Unit Studies are a great way to work on a subject with multiple grades. Students of different ages can work on projects varying in difficulty but they are all working on the same subject at the same time.
One of our favorite resources for multiple age learning in Schoolhouseteachers.com is Drive Thru History. This award winning series captures the interest of all ages (okay maybe the baby will sleep through it).
SchoolhouseTeachers also offers a section just for Unit Studies with a how to video to help you out. You'll find Unit Studies for most every subject.
How to Make a Homeschool Schedule for Multiple students
So now that you know you can use Schoolhouseteachers to help you homeschool all of your children for one price how should you schedule your day to get this done?
When creating the perfect homeschooling schedule for your family subjects, student agse, and family schedule need to be taken into consideration. Use these three things to come up with a schedule that will benefit both children and adults. But let's not recreate the wheel. You can use the tools available in Schoolhouseteachers.com to come up with a schedule that meets your needs.
The first step in creating a homeschooling schedule is to develop a mission statement. Take a few hours to sit down, write and rewrite a statement of purpose for your homeschool. Consider these questions: what do you want your children to learn? What can you provide through homeschooling that your child cannot get through a regular education setting? What traits do you want to promote in your child? Writing a mission statement will guide your instruction and scheduling choices.
As a member of Schoolhouseteachers.com you'll have several planning tools at your fingertips including the Mama Planner. This downloadable ebook planner (free for members) will help you to plan and organize your homeschool year.
Now with a mission statement and what subjects you want to teach in from to you, you can begin to schedule what your homeschool week will look like. With your weekly calendar in front of you, first write down meal times, snack times and nap times applicable to your child and/family. If your children are past nap times that's great!
Next add in regular family activities, such as weekly trips to the grocery store, sports practice, or church commitments. We have a lot of these and everyone has different commitments so I have to write these down or we can make the mistake of becoming overbooked.
Also when teaching multiple ages keep in mind that some activities can be tied into current studies and become part of the learning environment. For example I run our church homeschool co-op. It's open to everyone in the family and the day marks as a homeschool day in our area. We use our co-op for extra curricular activities such as art. Sometimes we also add in some exciting Science and it covers every age from preschool to highschool.
Focus on One Subject a Day
Here's an option for togetherness. When planning your homeschool week have each day of the week focus on a different subject.
For example on Mondays, when you're fresh focus on Math, Tuesday's English, Wednesday Science, Thursday History, and Friday's can be Field Trip Friday or something.
That way on any given day you can all work together as a family at the table, in the homeschool room or what have you.
There are tools to help with planning, record keeping, grading and recording.
SchoolhouseTeachers.com has a little something for everyone.
In addition to the lesson plans in a myriad of subjects for all grade levels (Not all subjects are offered in each grade level), you get…
- Access to current and back issues of the The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine (digital format) from 2007 to current. These are always great reads packed with timely information on the world of homeschooling. Includes special Holiday issues.
- Schoolhouse Printable Planners and Schedules (all-purpose, high school) for the current school year. Every homeschooler should take advantage of a planner. Organizing home and schoolife can be a little daunting and planners help that. There is the regular planner for mom to use, and then a planner for your highschooler. They are editable and packed with over 200 pages each! These are homeschooling gems within themselves and worth the price of the annual membership alone.
- Expo recordings from 2010 to current and Molly Green Expos. Lots of special topics at the expos. From teaching music in your homeschool to bulk food preparation.
- Then there is Literary Center with downloadable books for up to 4th grade and reading help for struggling readers of all ages.
- And in case you get lost, as I was starting to, there is a Start Here section to get you going. You'll find a monthly checklist for each grade level used to keep track of what you should/could be using each day on the site and a spot for marking progress at the end.
- There is a Teacher Lesson Archive where uploaded lessons are organized by the month so you know what lesson plans are added each month.
- Homemaking Helps such as Monthly Menus with printable recipes. Marriage Help (say what?!). Organizing help and lots more.
- Video access to RightNow Media
This is a great time to sign up with SchoolhouseTeachers
Schoolhouseteachers.com is the ideal source to teach multiple grade levels at one time. There are so many ways to customize this resource to fit your own family and needs. Be sure and reach out if you need help in navigating it (I'm a SchoolHouseTeacher.com Ambassador and former Homeschool Review Crew Member).
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this product through the Schoolhouse Review Crew in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations
