Home daycare while homeschooling?

[Starshine]

Hello everyone :)

I have been lurking on the forum for a while, I am amazed at the amount of information and experiences here!

Is there anyone here who homeschools their own children while doing daycare? I am concerned that because my son will be older than the daycare children, that he may feel left out, or that I won't have the ability to spend one-on-one time with him. I'm not too worried about the actual homeschooling, as it doesn't take up a huge portion of our day, and I can always do intensive work with him in the evenings/on weekends. I am more worried about how to engage him while also attending to infants/toddlers. I would very much appreciate any advice you can share, or how you did it with your family.

[Momof4]

You need to talk to Judy Trickett. She homeschools her children and is the most intelligent woman I know. Maybe you should send her a pm?

[playfelt]

You will be able to work some of his teaching into the daycare in the sense of having him read to the children or tell a story on the feltboard or helping a child to play a game. All of those things will improve his own skills while also developing his leadership skills, public speaking that sort of thing.

In most cases you will have naptime in the afternoon that you can use to do some one-on-one work with him.

You might find if you advertise that you are homeschooling that you will find families with kindergarten age children that have decided not to send them to school and would appreciate the personalized instructions meaning you could provide more of the science experiments and outings.

Take a look at some of the teaching methods such as montessori. That gives a good idea of how multiple levels can learn together in the sense of work periods where each one does a set of tasks.

With lots of books and a computer in the house your son will also be able to do a lot of research type assignments with only limited input. He will become an independent learner.

[Sandbox Sally]

I homeschool my 12 yo while also doing home daycare. You will find that you are able to give lessons, assign work etc during nap times, and your child will need far less time to complete and absorb these assignments than they do at a brick and mortar institution. My daughter is on par with her non-homeschooled friends (ahead, actually), and she only does school work 2.5 hours a day. The rest of the time, she hangs with me and the dck's. She loves it!

Homeschooled children quickly become self directed learners.

[Inspired by Reggio]

....Homeschooled children quickly become self directed learners.

I agree ... and in reality with school they are not in 'class' from 9-3 .... there is lunch, recess and so forth in there and well the 'distractions' of the large groups that prevent the focus of study ... when you are at home with a small group it is easier to cover work in a short period of time!

Not to mention all the 'life lessons' learning in helping with the childcare program ... time outside in nature and so forth.

We wish we could have home schooled - downsize of 'shared' custody someone else gets a vote and with something like homeschooling their NO vote carries more weight cause school is the 'norm' and having to fight in the courts for something that is against the 'norm' not so easy :( He only has two more years to muddle through now though and highschool is easier for him that grade school was - so hopefully they go by with more ease!

[clep]

I home school my 9 yr old son and run my day home. I absolutely love it and so does my son. We use a fully aligned program however which is very self guiding. My son has also become very self guiding on his own since we started. We do his science projects during rest time so as not to be interrupted with that and we have a couple other quiet rooms if he needs it. He only has to dedicate about three hours of work a day to school work as there aren't the regular distractions and challenges there are in a classroom.