Hi there! I am new to this. Homeschooling and forums. My name is Mary. I have been married for almost 11 years to my wonderful husband Wayne. We have 4 boys. Our oldest is Jacob 8, Benjamin 7, Samuel 4, and Zachary 2. I am homeschooling for the first time this year. Jacob is in 2nd grade and Ben is in 1st. How do you do it???? How do I keep my little guys happy, the house clean, laundry done, meals cooked and still homeschool??? I am feeling very overwhelmed and very frustrated. We know this is God's will for our family and I am happy to do it, there just aren't enough hours in the day and I am so tired. Any suggestions?

I'm thinking coloring pages, clay, easy preK handwriting pages..special toys meant just for homeschool.

Two sites I can recommend: http://www.dltk-kids.com It's got a world of coloring pages, links to other things.

www.first-school.ws is great for preschoolers too. Both are fun!

I wish I could help you more - mine are in 1st grade and 3rd now and it's my 3rd year homeschooling. I would not recommend a video for the kids. Take short breaks in between subjects. Get the little ones involved in art in some ways. I hope I did help!

And welcome!

Thank you Chris, I printed off some coloring pages tonight. Hopefully this will keep them busy. Those web sites were great.

Thanks again, Mary

Mary,
I can definitely relate to what you're going thru! Altho' my kids are all teenagers now, we started homeschooling when my oldest was 4 and I had a 2-yr-old and a baby. My youngest was born right after my oldest finished kindergarten, so his 1st grade year I had one in pre-K, a 2-yr-old and a newborn. Talk about a challenge!! But, obviously, I survived, and you will, too.

The best advice someone gave me was to consider my baby/toddler/preschooler as my youngest students. Just having that mind-set helped me to not feel like they were interrupting school, but rather that they were a part of our homeschool. We did seat work in small doses, 10-30 minutes at a time, usually while the baby was sleeping or playing happily. Or I'd have one older one play with the little ones while I worked with the other, then they'd trade off. For things I needed to do with the two oldest together, I'd either wait until the younger two were napping, or get them involved in something they could do on their own for a while. The big key for me was not trying to do too much at once. We'd spread school out thru the day, taking breaks as needed. We also did very little seat work in the early years. We did a lot of things hands-on and could involve the little ones in what we were doing. I'd put the baby in the high chair and let her play with our math manipulatives while we did math at the table. Or sometimes we did math on the chalkboard or marker board and let the toddler color along side of us. We read lots and lots and LOTS of books with everyone included. We played games to learn and reinforce math and other concepts.

As far as household chores, involve your children as much as possible. Let them help you, even if it means it takes longer at the time. They will learn a lot from that, and a few years from now you will be very happy that you taught them how to work. It was hard for me to teach my kids how to help with housework when they were little, and I was very tempted to just do it all myself (much faster and easier). But now, I am so blessed to have teenagers who can do pretty much anything that needs to be done around the house. It's hard getting to that point, but well worth the effort. And it still counts as part of school. When they were little we called it "Life Skills", now it's "Home Ec" for high school.

I hope some of that helps. Your kids are little and it can be very challenging at times, but it is well worth the effort.