Teaching multiple kids

Do you mean you have only a 4 and 11 year old, or kids ranging from 4 to 11? I would approach it two slightly different ways.

If you only have a 4yo and an 11yo then there are some things they can still enjoy together. Ones that come to mind include picture study, composer/music study, poetry, nature study. However be aware that a 4yo doesn’t have any need for school. Wait until they are 6 and before then simply enjoy nature, good books, and lots of play time.

If you actually have a couple kids between the 4yo and 11yo then you can do all the things I mentioned above together, as well as enjoying books in the same history time period (while a 7 or 9 year old might enjoy things more on the picture book end the 11 yo would also enjoy a chapter book and everyone could enjoy a chapter book if YOU read it aloud). Science can be done together, just learning about different topics of interest.

My house is split this way:

One high schooler, 11th grade. She does her own studies and can join everyone else for picture study or similar enrichment items if she wants, we have one family read aloud going for everyone. But the majority of her studies are separate from the rest of her siblings. The next closest is a 4 grade gap down so she is really her own group.

Middle kids: 7th, 6th, 4th, 3rd, 1st, K. These kids do much of their learning as a group but have individual work for skill based things like math, learning to read. We’re all in the same history topic but independent readers are reading their own book choices from the history shelf while I’m reading aloud picture and shorter chapter books to the beginning readers.Science we do together.

Little kids: 4yo, 2yo, baby that hasn’t joined us yet but was due a bit over a week ago. No school. They play. They snuggle up with books and make messes with art supplies. They interrupt and join in on science experiments when they can wiggle their way on to a sibling’s lap at the table.

Yes. My kids have been all over the map at that age. Some have asked for ‘school’ and sat at the table and participated. One thing I do is have school things for them in a bin but I NEVER pull it out and say, “it’s time to do school”. THEY can always tell me they want to do school and I send them to grab their bin, but I make it my goal to never initiate when they are that young. That way the ball is always in their court, they are in control of when they want to learn like the bigger kids and when they just don’t.

They play. Toys, puzzles, crayons, art supplies, playdoh, water beads, magna tiles, duplo, dolls, toy animals, etc. I’ll try to get back later with some specifics.

We’ve done two different things for elementary science. 1. Apologia Elementary textbook and all the experiments. This is really full of information so it works better just with kids on the middle to older elementary end of things, even into middle school. We never finish a book in a single year.   2. Lots of picture and nonfiction picture books, with a side of bigger books for middle schoolers. We literally just choose a topic and I pull from my shelves and from the library a stack of books. Then we pick a new book to read each day we do science. We may add in experiments, we may not.

This year we’re enjoying option 2. We vary, depends on the year and the desires of my kids. Last year we did a lot of the Apologia Chemistry and Physics elementary book. The years before that varied similarly.