Anyone who has to entertain a bunch of children from different age groups knows how difficult it can be to keep them gainfully occupied. Now add the fact that in the homeschool classroom the adult needs to actually teach them lessons, and you can understand how much of a challenge it can be for the homeschool parent. Here are some ways to keep all of your homeschool students busy, without putting too much stress on yourself.
Same Topic Different Activities
Say you have one kid in Grade Four and another in Grade Six, pick a topic that both need to be taught. For instance Heat and Thermal energy. Allow them both to conduct an experiment where they see how much heat is required for how long to melt an ice cube. You can then transition the younger student into states of matter – solid, liquid, gas. While the elder student can be asked to calculate how much time it would take to melt a larger block of ice thus co-relating mass of the substance with heat required.
Less Effort and More Gets Done
By starting out with the same experiment, you hold the interest of both the students and don’y have to make different activities for them. Also if you have the questions ready for them to answer, they can both be made to move seamlessly from the science experiment to the worksheets that they need to answer. It will take a bit of planning ahead, but will make it easier to handle both the children in the homeschool class together.
Toys Become Educational Tools
Most children love to play with magnets. Now you can create two separate lessons using magnets for both your homeschool students in different grades. Let the younger child learn about how magnets can attract and repel each other by bringing them close to each other. For the elder child the magnetic force can be explained and measured. The power of the magnet’s field can be explained and he can be made to pick up iron pins. Allow him to calculate just how powerful the magnet is, in terms of the number of iron pins it can hold in it’s magnetic field. Repeat with more magnets to find the strongest one.
