Combining Homeschool grades

My 5 year old is highly active and cannot sit still or quiet for very long at all.  Out of the blue he will start singing at the top of his lungs or make train noises.  I have included him for a lot of our subjects, but I do not require him to stay if his attention is not there.  Also, I let him have a small toy to hold while I am reading and allow him to wander the room.  He seems to remember the stories even with these things.  Somedays when he is having a bad day and cannot behave or concentrate I allow him to go into another room and play with legos or something else and we continue.  I know we are going to rotate around to these books again by the time he is older, so I do not worry if he doesn’t hear it all.  Play-do is wonderful, he will sit for an hour with that.  Puzzles are also great and quiet.

What I do with the Module is try to get my 5 year old, Ash, to stay for the books in the 1-3 range, but when I need the next books from the 4-6 level with my 4th grader I let him go. For Example: we are reading Buffalo Bill by D’Aulaire and my 5 year old listens, but next we read Caddie Woodlawn.  If Ash is not interested in sitting still for CAddie I try quiet toys and then have him leave if that does not work.  

For Literature, we had already read all the EArly Year Books.  They were in seperate bedrooms before and so I read the seperate bedtime stories and my 5 year old has loved hearing stories.  So, now I am picking books in between their levels.  First I read Popper’s Penguins and now we are going through Roald Dahl’s entire collection one at a time.  They both liked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  We ate cabbage soup while reading it at lunch and we tried to see how long they could make a chocolate bar last.  I have found that Reading at meals is really helpful for the younger children because their mouths are busy.