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How to Homeschool with a Toddler – Easy Tips and Tricks for Homeschooling Multiple Ages

One of the biggest challenges in homeschooling is what to do with our beloved toddlers, while we are trying to teach and help our older children with school. It is a challenge I face right now as I’m writing this post, my 2 year-old, just minutes ago, was spilling his water cup in our living room and on his clothes purposefully.

While, it truly is challenging to homeschool multiple ages, anything worth doing is usually hard and challenging. Below are some easy tips and tricks to homeschool with a toddler to make your homeschooling day go smoother for you and and your family, ultimately giving you more peace and joy in your homeschooling.

1. How to Homeschool with a Toddler – Include Them in School

One of the biggest mistakes we make as homeschool moms is to separate school from our toddlers. We have our older children in “school” and our toddlers are left out. We might think they are too young to participate or not able. Or we might think it would be too difficult and take more time to include them. While it is true that they are young for formal curriculum, they can be included in many subjects and activities. By including them, they are less likely to act out for attention and will feel a part of the family and learn over time that this is just what their family does. Below are some examples of ways to include toddlers in your homeschool day:

  • Include them in your morning Bible time. Read the Bible together and have your toddler at the table with you. They can learn to pray, get their own Beginner’s Bible and bring it to the table. Even if they only sit for a few minutes and then go off and play, they are learning the family routine of having this time together. Recite a memory verse together, with your toddler within ear shot, and sing worship songs together. Toddlers are like sponges and soak up everything they hear and learn. You will be surprised at how much they remember and learn during this time.
  • Include them in read aloud subjects, unit studies, history and science projects – Grab a coloring book, Wipe Clean Workbook, Water Wow or one of your toddler’s favorite quiet activities while you read books. We read science and history together, so this is great time for me to grab these activities for my toddler and have him sit with us at the table. He may only sit for a few minutes, but he is still hearing, participating, learning and being a part of this family time. Also, toddlers love to help out with science projects! Any hands-on learning is so engaging and fun for little ones.
Using Water Wow books during our Read Aloud Time

2. How to Homeschool with a Toddler – Have Older Siblings Help Out

As your older children do more independent work on subjects such as math, English, spelling, penmanship, have your older children take turns playing with the little ones.

This is how it looks in our home. We have a 5th, 3rd, and 1st grader, 4-year-old preschooler and a 2-year-old toddler. I take turns helping my elementary children one on one with the subjects that are more challenging for them and spend about 15 minutes at a time with them on those subjects. During that 15 minutes I’m helping one-on-one, I have an older child play or read books to the toddler for 15 minutes.

So when I’m giving an English oral drill to my 5th grader, I have my 3rd grader play 15 minutes with the toddler. Then, typically my 3rd grader needs help with English, so I spend 15 minutes sitting next to her and we go through the lesson together. At that time, my 5th grader plays with my 2-year-old for 15 minutes.

My 1st grader also takes turns playing with my toddler. The school age children get a break from their studies and the toddler gets that much needed one-on-one attention. Its a win-win for everybody.

You may be wondering, what if that child needs longer than 15 minutes help. I typically have my children work for about 15-30 minutes on most of their subjects.

I realized about two years ago, when they are working longer than that they become frustrated and stressed and are not learning anymore anyway. So we put a cap of 30 minutes on each subject. As long as they are staying focused and working for 30 minutes during that time, even if they only finish a half a page of math, we just do that amount.

This has saved us much frustration and many tears. I realized for myself too, that I get more done, if I set a timer for 15 or 30 minutes and make that my focus time, instead of having an endless amount of time to finish something, which often leads to distraction and overwhelm.

If they finish their 2-page math assignment in less than 30 minutes they are done and are allowed to move on to their next subject. This keeps them motivated to work hard, but also move at a good pace.

If your child needs your help for the whole 30 minutes of a given subject, you could try taking a 5-10 minute break, play or read a book to your toddler and then come back to helping your older child. Or you could rotate another sibling to play.

Sometimes I am just holding my toddler on my lap while helping my older student. It’s not going to be perfect, so just do the best you can to include your toddler where you can and give them attention when you can.

3. How to Homeschool with a Toddler – Use toddler Workboxes

A few years ago, I bought these scrapbook containers from Michael’s and they make the perfect containers to hold board games and also to store activities for my little ones to use during school time.

There are so many amazing toddler workboxes out there, here are a couple of posts about workboxes:

I keep my pretty simple and just used things we already had on hand, were passed down to us, or toys/games we bought as presents throughout the years. Below are some of the things we include in our workboxes:

My little ones can only use their workboxes during school time so that makes them extra special and exciting to use and they actually look forward to school!

4. How to Homeschool with a Toddler – Take Short Breaks to Play Together

I once heard a speaker say toddlers are like car meters. You have to continue to go back to the meter and put change in it if you want to keep parking there. Well, in a similar way, toddlers need their love meters filled with a lot of attention, time and love. Its hard for us as homeschool moms because we are so busy and easily get caught up trying to stay on schedule to ensure we get through all the duties and priorities we have throughout the day.

But here’s the thing. Our children are one of the highest priorities God has entrusted to us. Our toddlers are not an interruption to “our plans and schedule.” They are our main job, to take care of, teach, love and nurture throughout the day. Yes, maintaining a clean home and getting through school are important things. But it is so important to make the main thing the main thing. God will redeem your time and you will get those things done too.

The good news is, when you put money in a meter machine it doesn’t have to take a super long time. And the same goes for our toddlers. Just remember to keep coming back and filling up the machine throughout the day.

For example, once when I was working on the budget, my toddler kept coming up to me and “interrupting” me. If I continued to shoo him away, I would be frustrated, he would be sad and upset and it would probably take me longer to finish. So I stopped, played with him for 10 minutes. He was more satisfied and filled up and more willing to play independently on his own, and then I was able to finish my budget in 15 minutes.

Keep this in mind during school time. If you are working with one student and your toddler is acting out, sometimes taking a quick 10 minute break to go help the toddler, maybe read a book or two together, or get him playing a favorite toy can really help. If you do this consistently throughout the day, their love meters will likely be more filled up, and they will be more willing to play independently.

5. How to Homeschool with Toddlers – Have toddlers help out whenever possible

Another way to include your toddlers throughout your school time is to have them be your special helpers. Children love to help and it gives them opportunities to learn and be independent. We are always managing our home as we do school. Giving your toddlers special jobs and duties help them feel a part of the family and school day and is another way to spend time with them. Some examples of jobs they can do include:

  • Bringing dirty laundry from hamper
  • Putting dirty clothes in washer
  • Transferring washed clothes to dryer
  • Washing dishes with you
  • Unloading dishwasher
  • Wiping countertops
  • Dusting
  • Helping you sweep
  • Helping you make the bed

6. How to Homeschool With a Toddler – Adjust Your Schedule as Needed

There is a lot of advice to do school while your toddler is taking a nap. If that works for you, then go for it! This didn’t typically work for us, and we just continued to make adjustments every year as children grew and schedules changed.

When my oldest daughter was 2, I started with a Bible story, song, and verse during my second daughter’s nap time in the afternoon. However, my children didn’t take naps much past two-years-old, and so we had to adjust and change. Once my oldest daughter was around 4, we switched to school in the mornings and adjusted to including my two-year-old. We did fun preschool Bible activities and lessons from ABC Jesus Loves Me, which is an amazing free Christian curriculum and I would highly recommend to anyone starting homeschool with preschoolers.

Sometimes we started school around 10am, occasionally we have started at 8am or 9am. Choose a time that is convenient and works for your family. Evaluate it after a few months and see if something could be tweaked or work better for you. Sometimes small, subtle changes can make a big difference.

7. How To Homeschool with a Toddler – Change Curriculum if Needed

My last piece of advice is to evaluate your curriculum and see if it is serving you in this season of your life. You may have envisioned, sitting around with your children reading tons of read alouds, but that might not be the best approach at this time. I’ve known great homeschool moms who got so discouraged because they had curriculum that was heavily teacher involved, and felt defeated and stressed. There is soo much curriculum out there, and a lot of great ones that have more independent work or less teacher preparation.

I feel after 8 years of homeschooling, we found a nice balance of teacher involvement and independent work. We have some reading time together, but also a good amount of independent work.

Rainbow Resource has these awesome curriculum comparison charts that include a teacher involvement category and shows whether teacher involvement is high, medium or low:

In conclusion, homeschool is a lifestyle and not something that is done just from 8-noon. Raising your toddlers to be a part of your school from the beginning will bring great rewards and more enjoyment for you.

Every family is different and you ultimately have to do what works best for your family. Including your toddlers in school, getting everyone to help play with them, giving them special toys or workboxes and choosing a schedule and curriculum that best work for you and your family are some great ways to bring fulfillment and joy in learning together.

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