Ten Kids at Home, Seven Grades to Teach
By Tirzah H.
When talking about big families who are homeschooled, a lot of people ask how my mom manages to teach all the kids the different grades. Well, she’s not the only one who teaches the kids - my dad is actually the one who’s in charge of our older kid’s schooling. But it is interesting to have seven kids who are currently of “schooling age” in the same house, not to mention the younger ones who have to be taken care of. Even though the oldest three are moved out, there are still ten kids left to raise - the job’s nowhere near done.
It takes a lot of teamwork. We older kids (aged eighteen-almost-nineteen, sixteen- almost-seventeen, fifteen, and thirteen) use NorthStar and/or Khan Academy for our schooling. Our dad is in charge of that, makes sure we get it done, and checks up on our courses. My ten-year-old brother is in the transition period, having just started his online NorthStar courses, and like myself and my other brother, uses Khan Academy for math. My mom is the teacher of my younger brothers, aged eight and six, and also my four-year-old sister, although she doesn’t do as much as my brothers. And my mom mostly teaches my younger brothers the “Three R’s,” reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic. For science and history, they usually watch documentaries. One wouldn’t expect young kids like that to pick out any documentaries other than the more exciting, BBC exotic animal nature shows (which we still learn a lot from), but they, particularly the eight-year-old, actually pick out really sophisticated ones about the universe, black holes, and faraway stars as well, subjects which to me are fascinating, but usually boring when put in documentary form.
But back to teamwork. The reason teaching a family of this size takes a team is because my mom doesn’t have time in her day to cook, clean, teach the kids, watch the younger ones, and do the other thousand tiny things that keep our household running smoothly. That means we all have to be on board. We older kids usually do a lot of the main cleaning, like the kitchen and living room (my mom still finds things to clean all day long, so do not think in any way we do most of the work) and a lot of the cooking. We also watch the younger kids (the three-year-old and eight-month-old) when she needs to get stuff done or do schooling with my younger brothers. Sometimes, if she has cleaning or gardening to do or wants to play with the babies, a work as important as any schooling, we older kids will help the younger ones with their school. They’re rather independent and can do math on their own and some reading and writing assignments, but still sometimes my mom has us older kids help them with math if they’re stuck or check their reading and writing assignments to make sure they got done properly.
So as you can see, schooling a family of this size isn’t as hard as it sounds. What is difficult is schooling a family of six, since they’re probably all rather young and can’t help each other. However, this way not only do the little kids get taught, but it helps teach the big kids both patience and teaching and helps bond the family together even closer and reminds us of some schooling we might have forgotten. So that is how homeschooling is done when there are ten children in the house with seven different grades - it doesn’t have to be a one-room schoolhouse setting as a lot of people assume. It’s just going from day to day, completing assignments and helping each other out.
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Tirzah H. has been at NSA for about two years. She lives in Indiana, USA with eight of her eleven siblings and mom and dad. She has recently started writing for the Navigator. She enjoys spending time with family, hiking, karate, writing, and playing with babies.