This is how we home school - 19 children

We use 5 computers for some our school work. The kids usually work independently on math ,phonics or english skills. The older girls do online GED courses every day.

I start all new children in preschool and move them up at their rate. Selah is actually more advanced than preschool and she will finish her preschool work soon and move to the kindergarten curriculum. I am sure she will move thru that fast as well and settle into a first grade for longer. Isaiah is ahead of Lila but needs lots of preschool skill building like manipulatives , counting and recognizing numbers, letters and his name. Lila is learning lots of listening skills and socially appropriate behaviors as well as basic preschool skills like recognizing colors and numbers, counting and her name. She "plays" alot and is learning thru her play time. We often forget she just turned 3. She acts older and we have to constantly remind ourselves of her age with our expectations. All 3 do some phonics online. We feel it is important to teach all the kids computer skills so we do that thru mostly educational means. We also let some blog and email each other or IM.

We require all of our kids to read one hour a day. They all also have a reading book and have to read one story from that book daily. Some do this independently. Some like Josiah, Mya and Isaac read to someone for their hour. Abraham is the listener for the boys and Mya reads to Naty sometimes. This has helped them to read better actually. Doing work together like vocabulary words helps Isaac and Lily do it faster. Some of our kids take all day and then some to get their work finished. So we found that doing it in teams has helped them to work more efficiently.

We are doing something different this year. Our older girls grouped with 2 other younger kids. In the am they older girls teach or are available for helping their 2 siblings. They also check math and the writing before it goes to Dad's desk ( to be checked every evening by Paul). We are really stressing writing this year. If the little kids's writing is poor - like missing periods, captilizing mistakes or not complete sentences the older sister is held accountable too. We are trying to have the older ones learn some editing for their own benefit when they write. The older girls have the afternoon or evenings to do their school which this year for 5 of them ( Cate, Leah, Olivia, Rachel, and Naty) is their senior yr.. They are working towards their GED requirements mostly for their school. They do online math and english skills. They also go to a tutor on Wed. afternnoon. This buddy system has worked out extremly well for us as a mega family who home schools.

We are doing units on geography this year. I love teaching this subject.

 Each red dot represents the place where our children came from...All over the world- USA, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Ghana- I have loved being in each country and learning all about their own countries as we have adopted.

Gracie benefits best from doing her school in a quiet space, one on one. She gets instructions on a preschool level and sign language.

Sometimes the children work independently.

We have been doing school for 4 weeks now and we have gotten into our routine. I love this time when we do. The first few weeks we are all getting used to having a more strict routine than summer and getting everything done...Now we have gotten the hang of life and things are going well. Then we throw in all the unexpected or expected disruptions like surgery but our school flows well inspite them now.