After a new baby is born....

[ivkins]

My dds are 4 and 6. I have a 4 week old. I am no where near being ready to start school again. i can hardly keep us all fed and showered! When did you start back up, if you even stopped, after a baby was born? i'm feeling guilty....t.v. is their main education at the moment

[broodymama]

DS2 is 4 months now and things are still chaotic. I have a 6, 4, & 2 year old. Let's just say that we're really relaxed homeschoolers this year.

[beth144]

glad i'm not the only one! i have a 3mo here as well as a 5 and 3yr old. i feel so guilty that we're not really doing school right now i'm hoping by january things will be a lot better in terms of this.

[moominmamma]

A new baby is a curriculum. You're already homeschooling again. Your dd's are learning about empathy and infant development and hygiene and nutrition and patience and diapers and breastfeeding and self-sufficiency and helpfulness and all that. Seriously! You really can't overestimate the value of all that life-learning. Let the 3Rs take a back seat for a while. There's plenty of other stuff that's being learned.

Miranda

[tallulahma]

Originally Posted by moominmamma

A new baby is a curriculum. You're already homeschooling again. Your dd's are learning about empathy and infant development and hygiene and nutrition and patience and diapers and breastfeeding and self-sufficiency and helpfulness and all that. Seriously! You really can't overestimate the value of all that life-learning. Let the 3Rs take a back seat for a while. There's plenty of other stuff that's being learned.

Miranda

coudnt agree more!

it gets easier!

my kids are younger- 5, 2.5 & 1 months... but i have found babywearing, crafting, book reading and such to be the back bone of our homeschooling dd1 at this point.

at 4 weeks we would go for nature walks, library, park.... simple. keep it simple.

[MyLittleWonders]

When ds#3 was born, I had an almost 5 year old and a 2 1/2 year old. We basically did nothing that resembled "school" for a while (actually even ds#1's first grade year was very relaxed as ds#3 was very intense and only wanted me to hold him in my arms, 24 hours a day).

This time, I'm due right after Thanksgiving. I'll have a 9 year old, 7 year old, and 4 year old. I have 6 weeks planned of no school (well, I have some independent stuff for the older two to do to keep up skills - math fact sheets, Explode the Code, etc.) so they aren't totally lost when we start again). I'm not sure if that'll be enough (it depends mostly on the temperament of this little bean), but I'm hoping that by then I'll be able to get through at least the core subjects with the older two. At the age of your kiddos, I wouldn't worry about not getting school done right now - maybe when feeding the baby, you can sit and read together a bunch of different books - some literature, some poetry, some non-fiction picture books. Let them draw pictures. Is your oldest writing yet? If so, maybe she can draw some pictures and write about her new little sibling. But for now, keep it simple. It does get better and easier and your older two dds are still quite young in their schooling career. Congratulations on your newest addition!

[Pookietooth]

I am having a hard time too, and the baby is now a year old! I will be subbing to this thread.

[crunchy_mama]

We were pretty informal last year but I did have a routine of sorts. I started back when the baby was 6 wks old. Now, my oldest was only 5.5 at the time, and as I said pretty informal but it helped having time set aside to do things.
8 am- b-fast- basic things like eggs and such.
9am-singing/circletime- Read-Aloud I just picked up the Wee-Sing book and picked out different things. Then we would have a pile of books and I would read and nurse. No specific books just tons of great pic books from the library. We went to storytime every Tuesday.

10am- or so and then have a snack and then try to go outside or take a break. Sometimes I would bring the chalk outside for them draw letters and numbers or pictures= whatever that was fun and easy. Briefly I had introduced the handwriting book but he wasn't really ready for it until closer to 6. I usually would take a bit of time here and throw a load of laundry in or do some supper prep- or browse on the internet.

11am'ish- We would play games. Games are a great way for them to learn Math and all kinds of things. His Math at that point was very basic, we would do Hi-Ho Cherry-O, Chutes and Ladders, Uno, Cooties, Cranium.

At 12 we would have a basic lunch, often safe lunch meat or leftovers.

12:30p-Movie time oldest would watch while I laid on the couch and nursed and dozed w/ the baby and the 3 y.o. would nap at my feet.

After that we had no specific plan and would muddle along until Daddy got home. It helped as I said to have a routine of sorts even if what we were doing was pretty informal. I would just start at 9 am regardless of what else was going on- there is always cleaning to do. It helped as well especially at first that we had lots of things to do that involved me sitting which was fine w/ a nursing baby. The 3 y.o. just tagged along she would play games right w/ us and listen to the books as well, of course just on her own level.

We kept schooling through most of summer but did take a complete break for 1 month for me to get caught up on all my cleaning and fix our schedule. We started back again in Sep when the babe was 9 months and I am still doing the same basic schedule but doing more specific subjects.

At 8 we still eat-
9 am is school time - we do singing- Lit- Math(RightStart now), Handwriting(HWOT) which is now pretty independent.
10 am-10:30 is snack and break. Depending on how the break goes and when we start it-
11 am is project time- one day is history- one art and one nature study. (Tuesday is Library day and Friday co-op)
12 is lunch time-
12:30 we start read-aloud
1:30-2p Quiet time starts then it is quiet time for 1.5-2 hrs. The 3.5 yo usually sleeps and the 6 y. draws, plays w/ legos or whatever else in his room.

The baby nurses whenever needed during this and it really goes pretty well.

I think that is the basics once I had it all planned out it wasn't that big of a deal.

[phathui5]

You have a four week old? Consider yourself on maternity leave. No more attempting to do anything with homeschooling for the next two weeks, then a light schedule until the baby is 12 weeks.

Ease back into it and don't stress out.

[elus0814]

Mine are just turned 6, almost 5, 19 months, and 2 months. I'm looking into a private school for just this reason. The older two really want their school time and I just can no longer give it to them. When we do have school time they end up in tears because one of the babies has interrupted, colored on, destroyed, cried during, etc. whatever they were doing. It's also next to impossible to get out of the house with all four of them. Even going to the park is an ordeal because I can't feed the baby while running after the toddler and I end up having to force everyone to sit in the car while I nurse in the front seat. I wish I had some advice! Thinking back to when I only had three I realize that those were the easy days.

[kittywitty]

Originally Posted by moominmamma

A new baby is a curriculum. You're already homeschooling again. Your dd's are learning about empathy and infant development and hygiene and nutrition and patience and diapers and breastfeeding and self-sufficiency and helpfulness and all that. Seriously! You really can't overestimate the value of all that life-learning. Let the 3Rs take a back seat for a while. There's plenty of other stuff that's being learned.

Miranda

Perfectly said! We gradually slip back into "school" after just reading books together for a few months and some independent work by themselves. Especially since your older kids are only 4 & 6 I wouldn't bother trying anything else for a couple of months. I would work more on getting your family functioning and comfortable together and worry about academics later. 6 is pretty early anyway to worry about these things!