One roon school house?

[mom2agang]

Does anyone run their homeschool like a one room school house? Larger families maybe? I am very interested in this approach because of having several in school this year.

[....]

I'm pretty sure what we do can fall into that category. My oldest two kids are 13 months apart and then #2 and #3 are 24 months apart (this makes it possible to combine almost everthing). I actually googled this about a year ago, and there are sites that have descriptions of how the teachers taught this way. We do some independent work (because I think it's good for them to work on their own) and I'll snag each kid individually for some one-on-one tutoring, but 75% of our schoolwork is done this way-all of them together, sitting at the dinner table.

 

I went to a one-room-schoolhouse in northern Wisconsin when I was in Kindergarten. I remember the lady had like K-4th grade. She would just set up us younger kids with an activity (like a coloring sheet) and then she would move around the room from grade to grade. She had the kids sitting in "grades" at round tables together. I don't remember much about her, except that she was really nice and had brown hair. :tongue_smilie:

 

If you google "one room schoolhouse", there's a lot of info out there. I even saw a website that lists public schools in the US that are categorized as "one room schoolhouses". This topic was very interesting to me last year and I think I've incorporated a lot of that into my teaching.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I went to a one-room schoolhouse from 1st - 6th grade (with the exception of 4th grade). Our desks were grouped by grade as Starbuck said. Most grades there were just two of us in our grade. We each had a notebook with our assignments which we worked on individually. The teacher called each grade to her desk to work with us in different subjects. If we had questions while she was busy with another grade we asked each other, or an older student would help us. We did art, music and p.e. together. The drawbacks in the school I went to (of course this could be changed if you are designing your own) was 1. They used a standard textbook/workbook approach 2. Science and social studies were often shortchanged because the teacher just could not find the time to do 6 grades worth of science experiments and history projects. We did some science and social studies reading but it was hit and miss.

[....]

What state was your school in, Jean? (if you don't mind me asking)

 

I saw a list of schools last year and I think there are still several of these in California (of all places - lol! :lol:) and up North.

 

I think our teacher had it down to an art form. She must've been doing this for a long time. What a nice lady, though! :)

[thowell]

I have dd11, dd10 and dd7. For math and grammar they have there own time and separate books but other than that we do everything together. I mostly focus on the older girls and dd7 tags along. However, I can say she has become very smart for her age because of this. She has really benefited from being exposed to material several levels above her.

[Jean in Newcastle]

What state was your school in, Jean? (if you don't mind me asking)

 

I saw a list of schools last year and I think there are still several of these in California (of all places - lol! :lol:) and up North.

 

I think our teacher had it down to an art form. She must've been doing this for a long time. What a nice lady, though! :)

 

Japan - it was a small American school for all the English speaking ex-pats in our city.