Someone asked me to write about how I handled homeschooling with a newborn in the immediate postpartum period.  At this stage in our lives, homeschooling postpartum is pretty much the same as any other time. 

When the kids were younger, I’d designate time after birth as ‘vacation’.  That was more to reduce everyone’s expectations than for anything else.  Now I don’t take a break; my kids continued pretty much with their regular schedule right away.  The baby was born Thursday night, and our official homeschooling days are Mon – Thurs, between breakfast and lunch.  By Monday morning I was back to being downstairs where I could supervise them.  Before you start mistakenly crediting me with being supermom, I’ll explain how I structure our academic time.  (This is basically the gist of the talk I gave at the conference on teaching the multi-age family.)

>>In terms of how you teach- how do you do it? Do you have text books and the kids teach themselves if they’re old enough and come to you for help? Do you teach a lesson a day? Do you have a set aside time for schoolwork?  Do you make assignments for your kids to do? Reports? Essays? Tests?<<

I don’t see my role as a teacher of academics, but rather as a facilitator for the learning in our home, to guide each of our children according to their needs and abilities.  I believe that independent learning skills are very important, and for the last three years have consciously taught the kids how to learn independently, each at their own level.  I’ve thought about what I feel the basics I want them to have are, and have summed them up as reading and writing in English and Hebrew, and math.  Reading is obviously done independently, except for my dd8 and ds7, who both sometimes read Hebrew out loud to me from their readers.  Ds7 sometimes reads his English books to me, too.  That was more in the beginning of the year than now; as their skills get stronger, they naturally need me less and less.  For writing, until age ten they do copywork; I’ve explained what that is already.  The older three use different writing programs (ds likes Writing Strands, but the girls really dislike it), and sometimes ask to do independent writing instead. 

For math, I use Singapore for the elementary age kids, which uses what is called a concrete pictorial approach that is very user friendly.  It’s meant to be taught to a child, but I’ve found the kids are able to use it for the most part without my help.  Right now dd8 and ds10 are using this, and come to me once in a while for help when they don’t understand something.  For the older three, they are all now using Videotext Algebra.  It covers pre-algebra, algebra 1, and algebra 2, so it’s like a 2 – 3 year math program.  It’s a very solid program – I started off a couple of years ago with ds using Teaching Textbooks, but I initially liked but then felt it wasn’t vigorous enough and switched to this.  It’s a video based math program; the lesson is on screen, and they can rewind parts where they have questions and watch it again and again until it makes sense to them. They can also ask a sibling who is further along for help, all except for dd14, since she’s the furthest.  (Ds15 really would be the furthest along, but the detour in school last year caused him to lose time and I asked him to start at the beginning of algebra 1 again this year so that he could systematically learn algebra without gaps using this program instead of the other two he used.)  This is wonderful because it’s very empowering for them to know they can learn higher level math without their mother’s help; it builds their confidence in their own learning skills. 

Everyone does their work at the same time, though the older kids obviously take much longer because they have more work.  Ds7 doesn’t yet have much official work, just some writing and reading with me, so he finished fast.  While they are all working, I start the day by sitting with my ds3 and ds22 months and read something with them, or sometimes play something with them.  I find it much better to right away give them my time and attention than keep them waiting for it for hours. 

As soon as ds7 finishes, I read out loud to him (now we’re half way through Dr. Dolittle).  This is honestly a bit distracting to the older kids because they find it so interesting that they end up listening while I read, too, but they don’t mind.  (They do their ‘seat work’ in the dining room, but we have an open layout on our main floor, so the couch in the living room where we read is just a few steps from the dining room where they’re working.)  Usually I wait for dd8 to finish before I read with him, or tell her to take a break from her work and to finish up after our reading time.  I take advantage of when things are quiet with the youngers, and that’s the main factor that determines what point in the morning we do our reading together.  Then I read dd8’s read aloud with her.  When there’s a break in between, I sit either at the table with the kids, doing my planning or writing type work, or do what basic computer stuff, like quick emails or online bill paying.  I don’t like to do things like writing here at that time, researching, or anything that takes a solid amount of time and mental focus, because my time until lunch is for the kids, and if the kids were to ask me something in the middle of being very focused on my computer work, I might get annoyed or brush them off.  That wouldn’t be fair to them.  But if they need any help, they need to ask me before lunch; I’m not responsive to any requests for academic help after that time. 

I don’t use tests; that seems to me pointless since I can assess what they’re doing and what they know pretty easily by virtue of being there while they work every morning and talking with them about what they’re learning.  Their writing assignments sometimes include essays; I’ve never assigned a report.  A report would naturally be done if someone had valuable information to share with others; to have them prepare something for no purpose but me to mark it is to undermine what a report is about. 

Of course, there is a lot of learning that goes on outside of the above.  My ds15 and ds10 learn mishnayos together every morning.  Ds15 spends another three hours every afternoon learning at a local shul.  Dd12 and dd14 both have Torah topics that they independently have chosen to pursue and do that in the evenings after dinner.  Then there are the many, many things that are integrated into our daily lives, and these things are probably the most meaningful kind of learning that there is.

So now that you understand how I structure our academic time, you can also understand how I can continue our same routine right after birth. 🙂

Avivah