Anyone homeschool with another family?

[Oak Knoll Mom]

Anyone homeschool with another family? I'm not talking about taking on an extra student, but actually homeschooling with another family where both moms do some of the teaching. How do you do it? What does homeschooling with another family look like for you?

 

I'm considering approaching my neighbor about homeschooling our children together. Her kids are in public school right now, but they're looking to make some changes. I think this would be a great option for both of us and sharing the homeschooling duties would take care of at least one of her major obstacles to homeschooling. Kids get along great, similar ages and ability levels, it's legal in our state, etc. :-)

[Orthodox6]

I tried this last fall, for 3 subjects. Utter bomb because of the other family's children. The other girl is a close friend of my dd's, the boy was an older brother of the friend. The mom (a close friend of mine) and I thought it would be a win-win situation, with everybody happy. Nope. I was so disappointed.

 

We were to meet once per week, for subjects which lent themselves to a single day per week of more intensive study.

 

My dd eagerly, with great interest, did the work, listened to the teaching portions, responded appropriately (and proving that she had listened). The other two children (ages 10 and 13) sat there with their thumbs in their mouths (I'm not kidding), staring dumbly at me. I scarcely got anything out of them.

 

Quit after two sessions.

 

I sure hope that my experience was atypical, and that you can make a "go" of this !

[mommaduck]

I've considered this, but the other mother and I would probably rub eachother wrong.

[Parrothead]

I'm going to try it this fall with another mom. She has a 6-year old that has issues with behavior. I really hope I can develop some patience that I'm sadly lacking.

 

We will be doing history and science on Fridays.

[usetoschool]

:lurk5:

 

I am teaching the kids of friends who aren't able to but that may change and both of the moms have said they would like to start teaching their own kids. Part of the reason I do it though is that I need social interaction for my youngest who is years younger than the next oldest sibling - essentially an only child at this point. So if they took their kids home I would want to try to do a weekly at least combined class of some sort.

 

My first thought though is that I know what I do and how I do it and I am a little nervous about turning the teaching over to someone else whose goals and committment may not match mine. Control freak? Me? :lol: It would have to be informational subjects like history, I think, instead of skill subjects like math. And there would have to be teacher's meetings about what you were going to cover...the more I think about it the more difficult it seems. Maybe we will just stick to field trips.

 

I have curriculum and methods and books that I love. I have been refining my methods for many years, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, this just came up this last week so I will be watching what others have to say about how you would work out the bugs.

[hsmom3tn]

We have done this with another family for history - SOTW, actually. My friend and I were supposed to take turns "teaching"; but she's one of those people that always likes to be in charge, so she always did it. It was totally fine with me, though. :D The kids enjoyed getting to do school with their friends a few times a week. They were younger, though, so I don't know how it would be with older kids.

[jelbe5]

My oldest has done science labs (Apologia General and now Physical) with the oldest children of two friends. It has been a nice "lab" experience for all of them. The other children are responsible for reading the material and it is up to their parents to decide whether or not to answer the on your own questions and do the study guides and tests. The young people seem to enjoy working together to do the labs and decide if it worked or not and what they learned from the experiment.

 

We meet around every two weeks . . . if there are only a couple of experiments in a module we will have the students read two modules and then get together to do experiments for both. It has worked out pretty well.

 

Adrianne in IL

[Mrs Mungo]

Anyone homeschool with another family? I'm not talking about taking on an extra student, but actually homeschooling with another family where both moms do some of the teaching. How do you do it? What does homeschooling with another family look like for you?

 

Not currently. However, we have in the past and plan on it for next year. We've never done it for every subject but we did science with another family for 4 or 5 years. We split up the experiments, usually doing 2-4/week, depending.

[Orthodox6]

I forgot. DH and the father of the aforementioned family team-taught high school chemistry to one of my boys and two of theirs, using "The Spectrum" course. Worked beautifully. Everybody learned a lot and had a good time to boot.

 

Not team teaching, as OP wishes to discuss, but that same year, I taught logic to those same boys.

[Oak Knoll Mom]

 

My dd eagerly, with great interest, did the work, listened to the teaching portions, responded appropriately (and proving that she had listened). The other two children (ages 10 and 13) sat there with their thumbs in their mouths (I'm not kidding), staring dumbly at me. I scarcely got anything out of them.

 

 

 

Sounds terrible! Thankfully this isn't one of my concerns--the oldest daughter already comes up 2x/week after she gets home to do Latin with us. She's a great student.

[JudoMom]

Sounds terrible! Thankfully this isn't one of my concerns--the oldest daughter already comes up 2x/week after she gets home to do Latin with us. She's a great student.

 

I think abbeyej does. You might want to PM her.

[Oak Knoll Mom]

Control freak? Me? :lol:

 

I know what you mean!

[abbeyej]

I think I really lucked out, but our experience has been fabulous...

 

This is my first year home schooling with another mom, but we've known each other for a number of years now, and her oldest had been in my Latin class for three years, so I knew her particularly well too. Our kids are of compatible levels and temperaments, and they get along really well together. My friend and I have similar educational philosophies and parenting styles. It's hard for me to imagine I would find many other people where all of those things (kids' personalities and academic level; moms' personalities and expectations for schooling and behavior) fit together so well.

 

We spent time discussing the idea in the spring, and met together (and emailed constantly) over the summer, getting everything squared away. We meet together two days a week, then home school more traditionally the other three days. On our days together, we begin with memory time (poetry, history songs, verses and prayers in Latin, science, etc) then begin classes. I do Latin with the Bigs (our two 6th graders) and she does a fun-yet-academic literature study with the Littles (1st, 2nd/3rd, and 3rd graders). The 3yo rides his Plasma car around and occasionally climbs on his mother or demands snacks, and sometimes the five bigger kids take turns reading or playing trains with him. After that, we switch and I do Latin with the Littles while my friend does Logic with the Bigs. Then I get the Bigs back for Greek and Poetry (we're just reading one of the MCT poetry books and discussing poems, occasionally practicing a new concept by coming up with new lines of our own) and the Littles have Study Hall or play educational games. We all have lunch. Initially, we'd all packed lunches, though we've come to prefer alternating which of us prepares a hot lunch -- usually a simple one-dish soup or pasta or quiche and perhaps fruit or homemade bread, etc... After lunch the Bigs do their science lab together (initially we tried to include everyone, and this was disastrous) while the Littles play, or we all do Art (using Meet the Masters), and even the 3yo joins in for that (more or less, lol).

 

The other mom and I visit when we can and drink lots of hot tea. :)

 

At the beginning of the year, the two oldest (6th graders) received identical assignment books. They do the same work in history, literature, math, science... Pretty much everything is exactly the same for both of them. That part has actually been fantastic. The older two discuss their history and literature assignments frequently. Sometimes, after our day's work is done, they sit together to do "homework" from MP's Christian Studies or Famous Men of the Middle Ages, or they'll ask each other about the current algebra work. Both of them have struggled in past years with having so much more work than their little sisters (though if anything, dd spends more time doing school now than ds did at her age, lol), but now they can commiserate. ;) Assignments that are given each week (for Latin, Greek, logic homework, etc) are written into their assignment books.

 

The younger ones are not all at the same level. My dd (Middle Little) is by far the strongest reader, but the older of the other two is *much* stronger with math. The youngest of the three struggles a bit to keep up, since her reading isn't really there yet, but she does very well with the memory work we all do together. Still, they enjoy their introductory Latin lessons, and my friend makes sure the literature she chooses for them to study is available on audiobook, so the youngest can keep up.

 

Anyway, we don't have them do precisely the same work at home. Much of their work is the same (they all do SOTW and WWE and Horizons and Singapore, though they have different spelling and grammar books and their other reading isn't assigned to match except what they're discussing in their literature class). Ideally, they're on the same SOTW chapters (which are meant to line up more or less with what the older two are doing in History Odyssey), and the girls often exchange supplementary history books. But they mostly work together on memory, Latin, literature (just the discussion/class), art, and they stay roughly on the same topics in history.

 

The things that have worked well for us:

-Compatible educational philosophies and parenting / discipline styles going in. This is huge. I have other friends that I love dearly, but whose style of discipline and expectations of children would not wear well with me over time. We really have to be on the same page.

-Children who get along well and enjoy each other's company.

-Compatible academic levels. This is more important, I think, than age or grade. While each of the kids has his/her own strengths and weaknesses, there are no glaring differences in level between the two oldest (doing the most academic load).

-Lots of pre-Planning. We came into the year knowing what we would be doing each week. And we have kept each other on track.

-Flexibility. Some things have changed over the year. Science lab with all five school-aged kids just didn't work. Maybe it would for someone else. Didn't for us! We had to be willing to let that go. Other changes have been mostly minor, but if somethings comes up, we're able to cope.

 

We didn't commit to more than this year when we started. The kids are having a great time though, and the other 6th grader has already started planning their high school graduation and lamented that only one of the two of them can be valedictorian, lol. ;)

 

I hope that's helpful. This year really has been our best home schooling year ever. :) But I feel very lucky that it has worked so very well.

 

ETA:

Here's a sample from the older kids' assignment book. (The SOTW box near the bottom refers to what the Littles are to read that week for history.)

Edited March 6, 2010 by abbeyej

[....]

I didn't get a chance to read the other posts...

 

but we homeschool often (maybe once a week) with another homeschool family (who we have been friends with for years). I think there are specific reasons why this works really well for us:

 

 

• me and the other mom are VERY similar - same age, same neighborhood, both have a bunch of kids, same parenting style, kids in the same grades, etc. In fact, we have joked that if something happened to our husbands, she and I were just going to all move into together. Yeah, weird, eh? :001_huh:
  
• we are REALLY strict with the kids. Heck, she's really strict with the kids. Doh!
  
• we are both present during schoolwork.
  
• our kids get along very well together and actually had been classmates in public school, so it was business as usual for them.
  

I could really see this as a disaster with other families, but this mom and I get along so well that it runs very smoothly for us.

[Oak Knoll Mom]

Thanks, everyone. I think I'll try to get together with her next week and try to come up with a plan. :001_smile: