Teach them to play independently. Here are a few examples of what I mean.

1. Get booster seats with seatbelts for at the table. Strap them in while you are working at the table with other kids, and hand them an activity. Tell them they will get a new activity in 10 minutes, when the timer rings. They will either play or toss their activity on the floor and shriek. Remind them they can get a new activity when the timer rings, and ignore anything they tossed on the floor. After a week or two of this, increase their timer to 15 minutes. Then 20. You get the idea. They will adapt to playing with what you give them, instead of tossing it. Be sure that the timer is the boss. YOU listen to it, stop what you are doing, and change their activity or get them down, and they listen to it.

2. Set up a child-safe play area near where you do school. Gate it off so they are in the area. Place an activity in the area and let them have at it. Basically, this is a bigger version of table time. You put out bigger activities (a small bin of blocks, or race cars and a track drawn on cardboard, a basket of dolls, any toy that can get wet with some wet washcloths to ‘clean’ them). Change the activity every so often (daily, or every hour, or whatever works for you).

Background – I’ve always homeschooled my kids. In the first 17 years of marriage I was pregnant 14 times and have 10 living children. Basically, we have always had babies and toddlers to contend with. I’ve now been married for 20 years and my kids are 19 (off to college), almost 16, 14, 12, 11, 9, 8, 7, 4, 2. These habits have worked for all of them. They learn to play with whatever is available, enjoy it, and be very creative. The important part is to slows make the time longer, until you comfortably get 30 minutes to 1 hour of independent play. Be super consistent. The training period will disrupt school for a bit, but then once they’ve learned the habit you will be able to get so much more school done with fewer interruptions.

Ah, let me clarify a bit.

1. They don’t sit at the table the entire time I’m at the table working with big kids. They sit for 30 minutes to an hour. Then they are in a safe play area running/jumping/playing.

2. We don’t use a play yard. By a child safe play area, I mean gate off an entire room, at minimum. We actually put a gate on the stairs leading to the 2nd floor, and made the entire 1st floor of the house child-safe. That means child locks on kitchen cabinets (so they can’t get into things), closed bathroom doors, and no decorations sitting around that could break. I’m right in the middle of it all, and can see or hear them easily as they are at most one room away from me.

So the routine for my little ones might look like this:

Breakfast and play while everyone else is eating and getting ready for the day.

School begins at 8am. The toddlers hop up to the table for 15 minutes with an activity. Then they get down and move to the next room to play with the wooden trains that are out, while I”m still at the table with big kids. After trains, they plunk away on our piano, come snuggle on my lap for a story, and run circles around each other.

9am – I move to the couch to do history lesson and read aloud with the whole family. The toddlers would now have siblings to sit on, or to build simple block towers with, or to pretend to bring food to. They’re still running around and playing.

9:45am – I am done with history. I head back to the table for lessons with some big kid, and the toddler comes to the table for 30 minutes with art supplies or some other activity.

10:15am – we all head outside for nature study.

11am – back inside to finish any sit down work with the big kids, while the little ones play. This time they’re using the trains and wash cloths to clean them all (pretending to do a car wash).

It is a bit chaotic, a bit noisy, but the older kids learn to tune it out and do their work, or they use noise cancelling headphones like you would wear at a gun range for subjects they really want to focus on. (Or they go upstairs to work in their bedroom on a subject for a change of scenery and quiet, because little kids are allowed upstairs during school hours.)

Try the 1 Room Schoolhouse idea.  Take a subject that your oldest can work on — let’s say history in the American Revolution times. Let all of your children be involved. The oldest can read books and maybe write little essays. The youngest can color pictures of the same subject. If you get them all involved in the same thing, it will be much less chaotic.