Homeschooling kids with 5-6 year age gap?

[Holiztic]

So we have one DC so far, he's 3.5 and we're really not ready for another yet, but we know we want another someday. Right now it is looking like we'll have a 5-6 year age gap. In general I am looking forward to this age gap and think it will be great, but I was wondering what it is like to homeschool a 6 year old with a baby? We'll be heavily unschooling at 6, but not radically--so I'll want to sit and work with him maybe an hour or two a day.

 

How does this kind of gap look at 3/9? At 6/12?

 

Just like to hear some stories of how families like this work out. Won't make a difference to our plan, but I'd love to hear the good and the bad.

 

Thanks!

[LinRTX]

Well I have 4 kids and all have fairly large gaps.

The gaps are 3 1/2 yrs, 4 yrs, 7yrs.

 

Currently at home I have 17/10. So I'm doing 12th and 5th this year. When I had a newborn and 14 (9th grade) it was hard, but doable. I think what made it especially hard was the two in between.

 

You will not be able to do much if anything together, but this is doable.

Linda

[Tree House Academy]

My kids are 4 years, 2 months apart. I use the same curriculum with them, but at different levels (Heart of Dakota). My older son is very independent while my younger needs me beside him for most of his day. It actually works out beautifully because I am not in such high demand.

[Pata]

My kids are 8 years apart, almost to the day. We were hoping for a 4-5 year age gap, but little man just took awhile to get here :). The great part is that my dd is a great help, plus she has a bit of independence in some of her school work. The downside, he takes up alot of time and we don't finish school by noon like we used to. It's been an adjustment, but I'm glad that we have such a large age gap, I'm not sure I could have handled two toddlers at a time :D.

[Dawn in OH]

I was wondering what it is like to homeschool a 6 year old with a baby? We'll be heavily unschooling at 6, but not radically--so I'll want to sit and work with him maybe an hour or two a day.

 

 

My first year of homeschooling involved a 5 & 6 year old doing a K/1st grade combo, with a newborn. In fact, the baby was born in August. He was also the "don't you dare put me down EVER" baby. First grade isn't really intense. It was actually fairly easy. I wore the baby a lot. I nursed him during story/literature time and music. I was overwhelmed at the idea of my first year of homeschooling and having a newborn at the same time, but now that I look back it wasn't that bad.

 

Now we are doing 3rd grade with a 3 year old and six month old in the house. It's not as bad as I imagined either. The older the older kids get, the more independent work they are able to do, freeing up time for the younger kids. The older kids can also take turns working with the 3 year old while I'm busy with the baby. They have been great at helping their younger brother learn to count, learn the abc's and learn colors. They will even run him to the potty as needed if I'm busy with the baby.

[TravelingChris]

I didn't have such a large age gap but they were grade wise gapped. My oldest was almost 4.5 years older than the second and she was 3.3 years older than third. For their whole school years, oldest was about five years ahead of next and middle was four years ahead. Now we have the two left, three years apart. I found it easy and would have found it even easier if I have the two furthest apart only to homeschool. They just didn't share work. The oldest two never shared any work together. The middle and youngest did as littles a bit and now do a bit together too. Only this year though, since next year I am down to one only.

 

Anyways, I found it much easier to have them far apart. Much less possibilities of sibling rivalry over who is better or ahead. No one complains that much older sibling is doing harder work.

[Guest aquiverfull]

I have a 6 year gap between 3 of my children. I don't homeschool my oldest who is 17 due to split custody reasons, however, I do homeschool the rest. My oldest that I homeschool is 11 then next in line is a 5 year old, 4 year old, and 23 month old. In my experience there is both pros and cons to the age span. So far school has been mostly just my 11 year old. This year I added in the 5 and 4 year old for Pre-K, and K. It's good because my 11 year old is gaining some independence and that leaves more time for the youngers, yet it's harder to combine my children in certain subjects like Science and History because of the gap.

 

I have been saving the curriculum to use with my younger children but that doesn't seem to work out so well. Because of the large gap, workbooks and such have been continually updated by the publishers and no longer match my Teacher's manuals.

[Mom-ninja.]

I think schooling a 5/6 yr old with a baby is not hard. Babies sleep a lot, and you just hold them when they are awake.

 

Schooling an older child with a toddler is hard. :tongue_smilie:

 

My oldest is 9 and my youngest is 2. It's not easy doing lessons as they are slightly more involved than at 5/6. However, I also chose teacher intensive curricula. My ds was a late reader and has not quite caught up yet fluency wise so he's not as independent as others may be at 9.

 

My older boys are a great help with the youngest. I do wish the gap between my oldest and youngest wasn't 8 years though. I love the three year spacing between the first and second.

[Pamela H in Texas]

I agree that having a large gap is nice. Though my kids are only 2.5 years age difference apart, the grade level difference was much greater in the younger years which made it easier to work with them separately. When my dd graduated, it was still a 4-5 year difference.

 

I definitely think that having a 6 year age difference in the beginning will be nice. I had 4 kids two and under (plus babysat a 2yo) when my daughter was 5. It didn't seem so hard at the time, but now it sounds impossible! Guess I'm just too old. LOL

[lionfamily1999]

So we have one DC so far, he's 3.5 and we're really not ready for another yet, but we know we want another someday. Right now it is looking like we'll have a 5-6 year age gap. In general I am looking forward to this age gap and think it will be great, but I was wondering what it is like to homeschool a 6 year old with a baby? We'll be heavily unschooling at 6, but not radically--so I'll want to sit and work with him maybe an hour or two a day.

 

How does this kind of gap look at 3/9? At 6/12?

 

Just like to hear some stories of how families like this work out. Won't make a difference to our plan, but I'd love to hear the good and the bad.

 

Thanks!

I haven't hsed a 6yo with a baby, but I have hsed a 7 yo with a 2yo and I'm now hsing a 14 yo with a 9yo and a 4yo.

 

One thing I'm noticing is that my youngest is the one most likely to do his work, on his own, without even letting me know he's decided to do any. My oldest is just starting to hs and I'm hoping she'll get better at working on her own, but the freedom is hard for her to come to terms with just yet. My middle son used to get the most attention, but with more and more subjects he does the work solo.

 

Now, I don't think you have to do work with a 4yo, but I do think that the youngest siblings can get jealous if they don't have work to do :p That made things difficult for us starting out. I bought some *special* coloring books, clay, popsicle sticks, glue and random other bits and pieces to keep my youngest busy, but I had to make sure he saw these things as work :D

 

:lol: Not sure if any of this helps at all, but if you have more specific questions, feel free to ask :)

[Amira]

I agree that there are pros and cons. My boys are in 6th and 5th grades, and I have a 2yo. It would have been easier to have the little one be a few years older now that school is a lot more involved with my older boys (it would have been much easier to have a 2yo with a first or second grader). But the mothering isn't as intense with the older boys, which means I have more to give to my little one.

 

My older boys are amazingly good at working on their own and that's entirely because of the little one. I don't know that's always a good thing, but it's worked for us. It's also been nice that the older boys are old enough to be home alone for an hour so I can get the little one out of the house while they work. But I've really struggled with getting back into the baby and toddler thing again.

 

I don't think there's a perfect way to space kids. You just take things the way they work out and do your best.

[LibraryLover]

It's been great.

Edited October 18, 2010 by LibraryLover

[Vida Winter]

I have a 5/10/15 so I teach kindergarten through high school all at once. It's hard but not quite as exhausting as having a toddler. I'd love to be able to combine things but at these ages it's too wide a gap - although I do combine read-alouds for the younger two all the time and I think the youngest absorbs a great deal from her older siblings. So - not ideal but then again, no one has an ideal situation - there are pros and cons for every age combination.

[sarawatsonim]

I am happy about seeing so many positive things about age gaps because I was worrying. My dd will be 6 next month and I am due in December so I am glad to have some of my worries dissolved.

[joannqn]

I think it is harder when you have an older child and a preschooler.

 

I have two sets. The first set is 10 and 8. The second set is 3 1/3 and 14 months. I'm having a hard time adjusting because I like doing school with my older two. My 8 year old is into math I want to relearn. My 10 year old is doing language arts I never learned. Science, literature, and art is fun for me. I didn't learn much history in school so I want to pick it up this time around...but I have that younger set.

 

The reality of it is that the 3 year old spends most of his day wandering around because housework, cooking, school, and the youngest take up all of my time. I'm working on making it better for him by making file folder games to play with him and including him in with our art. I want to get better at letting him "help" me. I think next year will be better because he'll start doing more with us.

[Snowfall]

My first year of homeschooling involved a 5 & 6 year old doing a K/1st grade combo, with a newborn. In fact, the baby was born in August. He was also the "don't you dare put me down EVER" baby. First grade isn't really intense. It was actually fairly easy. I wore the baby a lot. I nursed him during story/literature time and music. I was overwhelmed at the idea of my first year of homeschooling and having a newborn at the same time, but now that I look back it wasn't that bad.

 

I wish my experience had been like yours! I actually wasn't afraid or worried at all. I thought it would be simple: I'd hold the baby all day in arms or in a sling, and she'd happily enjoy life there, nursing and sleeping as desired. HA! :lol:

 

This baby fussed non-stop for months and she hates being in the sling. She fussed even while nursing and her naps are not only erratic (still), but short. It has been extremely difficult homeschooling with this baby. The worst part is that she's an early crawler, so we had about 1 good months where she wasn't fussing all the time and wasn't into everything, then she started crawling and pulling up (a week before 6 months on the crawling and at 6 months on pulling up), so now she's into EVERYTHING.

 

I think you just can't know what will happen until the baby's born. Easy baby = easy schooling. Difficult baby = difficult schooling.

[mcconnellboys]

Well, LOL, maybe not what you want to hear but I have that age gap and we put our toddler into a pre-school program at two to give us more quiet time. Some toddlers may be quieter than others; ours was rather noisy and my older son really needed quiet to work.

 

I tried rigging up a big giant play area for the baby so he could see us and we could see him. I filled it with toys and books, etc., but he was just too noisy for us to be able to concentrate.

 

At age two, he was just in a program for two mornings per week. For age three and four, he was in a daily program for half a day. In K, he started out half days, then moved to full days after a month or two. This was a Montessori school.

 

We brought him home for first grade and from that point on, it wasn't a problem. We just had to get through the toddler years....

[MamaT]

When I started homeschooling, my children were 2, 7, and 9. That wasn't hard because I had a very easy toddler. When my third son was starting 1st grade, though, we had added three more through birth and adoption. Schooling a 1st grader with an infant, a 9mo, and a 2yo, while also trying to have some time for my 12 and 14 year olds wasn't so easy! To be honest, that year is a blur. We got through it and it got easier every year after that. Whatever the age gap, you just have to learn to juggle your time. You'll do fine.