Four-by-four

In public school parlance, four-by-four means four full year classes in the fall & four full year classes in the spring. But for our homeschooling family, four-by-four means that each morning we have four "stations," or activities, that need to be accomplished, and four children to rotate through. This started because I have four children in piano lessons & that means two hours of practice a day. I have to keep the keys hot to get through everyone's practice before lunch & nap-time. I also have two sweet toddlers who get bored playing by themselves all day. I had to come up with a solution to the morning frustrations.

My solution was to come up with a rotation whereby every half hour, for two hours, we rotate through piano, playing or teaching the littles, chores, and one-on-one time with me academically. During piano, each child has a period of warm-up & certain pieces on which they are working. For chores, each child has certain chores assigned just to them. MK does all the laundry (sort, wash, fold), JH vacuums a third of our house, ML cleans two of our four bathrooms, and EA empties & reloads the dishwasher and washes down the counters; each child, each morning.

I also came up with a list of things to do with the littles that develop gross and fine motor skills: from play dough to bikes, from reading to them to playing superheroes. I have index cards with directed play & undirected play. In essence, the bigs & littles get some one on two time, work on their relationships, and help me get the littles ready for school.

Lastly, the station I enjoy the most is one-on-one time. During that time, I might talk to one about a book they are reading or help another write a chronology. This is academic time, not chat time or (for my eldest) time to talk about her volunteer activities. I have always found that with a lot of children and a busy morning required organization to be successful, but this current set-up really works well with the various ages & needs of this season.

-Jen