carrying my cross up hill

I just listened to a podcast of the lady who wrote Teaching from Rest and she said that she does not stretch all books out like that. Other subjects too like picture study.  That made me feel better b/c I don’t always spread it out over time either.  We may read our lit read-aloud 3 or 4 days a week until we finish it and then move on to something else.  You really have to do what works for your family during this season of life and do not worry that it may at not look like any other family’s homeschool.

And I will pray for you! Life is very stressful.  Can you put the school planning aside for a week or two and focus on other tasks/projects and rest?  Getting enough sleep and just some quiet time is critical!  We have quiet time every day and I park the oldest 3 with books in 3 different rooms while the youngest and I lie down.

I know what you mean about your husband’s stressful job.  My dh comes home very stressed out often.  Prayer is the best resource.  The children and I pray for him at mealtimes and during our Bible time, and I let him know that we are praying for him.  That helps him a lot. Sometimes I can catch a cute picture of a child on my phone and I will send it to him with an “I love you, Daddy” sort of caption.  To keep the noise down, we don’t have any toys out after supper – only quiet things like books, drawing, large jigsaw puzzle.

Give yourself some credit, you have eight kids!  Is everyone making progress?  Are you generally happy?  Maybe take some time off,  and reflect on what your family has accomplished.  Sounds like you need some rest, and I’m betting your kids would like some rest too.

Jen-I tend to get overwhelmed when I try to juggle too many subjects with multiple kids. I only have two children and doing all the CM subjects when they were little would have made us all crazy.

Instead we read from a history book each day and a science book, did some math and copy work, and had read alouds along with personal reading. That was really it until my children were older. We worked picture study and composer study in through our history studies. When we came to an artist or composer in our history studies, we stopped and read a book about them and/or studied their works. We got out in nature as much as possible and looked up things we saw to see what they were. Sometimes we drew these things. Most of the time we didn’t. We read geography books here and there and kept a globe handy to look up places that were mentioned in our readings.

That was plenty for my family for elementary school. I started more subjects when my children were able to work independently on them.

I can only imagine the homeschooling life with 8 kiddos! Take it easy on yourself. I’m sure you are accomplishing so much more than you give yourself credit for.

I just responded to your “My Book House” thread and here I am again. I can’t speak to having a larger family – I have three girls: 22 (married), 17 (graduated at 16), and going-on-7. So, you can see that I’ve never had the challenges that you have in balancing multiple ages and staying content and sane. But I do want to encourage you that if your kids are making progress, even though slow, and if you have contentment and joy in your home (even just sometimes – no one has it all the time, as you know!), you are doing a good job carrying that cross. By the grace of God!

I say this because in our years of homeschooling (since oldest daughter was 7, so our 15th year now), we have had multiple strange things happen with our immediate family and also my parents, most of these health-related, that interrupted our schooling for long periods of time. I believe there was a period of about a year and a half in the middle 2000s that we did very little formal school, just reading aloud and math and getting out in the world as much as possible, and praying. The whole year of 2011 was consumed with caring for my medically fragile mother in our home, when I had a toddler, pre-teen and teen. Not to mention my husband! We did basically NOTHING that year but try to care for my mom and deal with everything life threw at us with her situation, which was a lot of unpredictable, agonizing, difficult daily stuff. I tried my best to spread the feast but I was worn to a frazzle. My mom died in September of that year and our emotional recovery from that year was slow.

Not to hijack your thread with my own story, but I say all of this to say that there are so many ways of spreading the feast, and you don’t have to do so perfectly (whatever that means!) or like anyone else does. In my imagination, just having seven siblings to interact with is a feast for each of your kids. Hugs and stories and prayer, that’s the richness of so many days, as sappy as it sounds. My family survived 2011 and all the years before it, and amazingly, my children were fine. They were fine academically and personally. I know everyone has different goals and for some people, what we were satisfied with academically may not have been satisfactory. But we were thankful to God for what that year did to us as a family and how much better it was to have the three girls at home with me and their Grandma, rather than in school or daycare. Now I’m rambling, but I really am just trying to encourage you that you’ll make it and your kids will not suffer from wandering through the woods. Because they have YOU with them there, and they have each other. Especially with the really little ones (like up to the 3rd grader), you have so much time before you need to buckle down academically if they want to go to college. In the meantime, spread the feast and wander!

I’m a mom of 9, ranging from 19 down to 17 months and I know how it can be! I agree with all the great advice you’ve gotten so far and had a couple other thoughts. These are just my ideas and will depend on your children’s readiness. But… I would make your 10th grader completely independent so that even when you and the younger ones are having trouble getting things done the high school credits are still being earned. My high schoolers like being independent because they can plan around work and other things that come up and still get it all done. It really teaches responsibility. Next I would start the day with prayer and whatever Bible reading you like and concentrate on consistently assisting the 3rd and 5th graders with learning to read fluently and getting math done on a regular basis. Do they do a math curriculum that is fairly independent? After that is copywork for 5 minutes a day and then just take Tristan’s advice and play an audio book. You could have them listen during lunch or as soon as the youngest goes down for a nap each day. Just alternating between history, science and literature books would be good enough for now. Afterward you could ask for narration and call it a day as far as academics go. Now I didn’t mention the K and 1st grader but that’s where readiness will play a factor. It would be perfectly ok to hold off on academics with those two this year and help them more after the two older are reading and more independent. Of course if they’re begging to do school you’ll have to decide what they and YOU are able to handle. Teaching 4 dc to read at once would be a challenging task!

Beyond the basics, just giving them lots of time outside and with constructive play is healthy and educational! Try playing classical music in the background once in a while. Hang an artist’s work where they can see it and tell them who painted it. Read a picture book to the Little ones before bed or nap time each day. Education really is an atmosphere. Take care of yourself so that you’re peaceful and rested and give them space to learn. Good programmed kids to learn and kids in a healthy environment will learn! I’m amazed at how much my two graduates know and its not because I taught them so much. I give Good all the credit. He fills in so many gaps!

Keep up the good work! You’re making progress!