With school closed for lockdown and three children at home the prospect of a prolonged period of home learning was not something I was looking forward to. How was I going to get all three children's home learning done at the same time?
Little 3 is in Reception and just starting his learning journey focussing on learning through play, learning his phonics and to read as well as simple Maths and how to write his letters and numbers.
Little 2 is in Year three, the Romans and fractions being her current topics whilst Little 1 is in Year 5 and learning about the Geography of rivers and percentages.
Little 1 is bright and flew through her school work in a short time, around an hour. She was hoping to sit the 11+ grammar school entrance test in September before all this and so she would then spend half an hour or so doing something from her 11+ practice books finishing around lunchtime.
Little 2 needs support with maths as she lacks confidence in her ability, she is perfectly able to do all the operations and knows what to do to get the answers but it takes her a little time to do the calculations and she gets frustrated that it takes so long. She needs to improve her rapid recall of number bonds and times tables to get quicker at this which is something I picked up on early and so we have been working on improving this in home schooling.
She would get on with her other subjects first and once I had finished helping Little 3 I would help her with maths.
Little 3, who turned 5 in March, worked with me on his phonics, practicing his sounds through things such as I spy where we looked for words containing 'ch' for instance, drawing letters in rice with our fingers, writing a list of things in his bedroom and a postcard to grandad as well as practicing his flash cards, reading and writing tricky words.
I used bathtime and varying sized jugs and pots to sneak in a lesson on volume, introducing various bits of vocabulary like millilitres, pints and guessing how many pots would fill the jug etc. I used food too, a friend sent us a box of different mini bags of jelly sweets- Little 3 was my willing helper and while he thought he was just dishing out sweets we estimated how many sweets were in each pack, counted them and decided if we could share them equally between the three little ones bowls.
School sent through a couple of theme ideas like St George's Day, I went one further and printed off some activity sheets that used Maths and phonics rather than just the single task the school had set. The girls joined in with some printed off activity sheets at their level too even though it wasn't their set work, they enjoyed the change.
Doing learning in this way kept his interest, he didn't want to sit at the table long but I could keep him going and do much more with him by thinking outside the box.
Everything was really tasty, the girls have begun cooking the odd simple meal now too and I taught Little 1 how to use the kettle and coffee machine, I even had a couple of coffees brought to me in bed in the mornings.
Homeschooling wasn't all plain sailing though, there was a day when Little 3 refused to write as he hates writing, it was so messy I rubbed it out and he had to do it again- he cried as apparently writing is really boring. Little 2 got frustrated with maths a lot and it took all my patience several times to get her to chill and realise that she could do it. She also had a tendency to get up ALL THE TIME instead of getting on with it which drove me bonkers.
There were more good days than bad but on occasion there were tears, frustration and shouting- not just from the children. By May half term I was ready to give it all up. Three children, three different school years, it was hard. Luckily I went back to work in June and the Little Ones were back in school. I think we all benefited from not having to do anymore homeschooling but we all agreed that they had learnt a lot, had lots of fun and freedom in their learning and that Mummy made a pretty good teacher.
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