Managing Multiple Kids in Your Homeschool

Pam Barnhill [00:00:03]:

I am so excited to introduce this bonus to you. Hi, everyone. I’m Pam Barnhill. Welcome to episode 71 of the Ten Minutes to a Better Homeschool podcast. I help homeschoolers beat, burnout, create doable systems, and bring more joy to their homeschool day. Okay, so this episode is all about the bonus for Put Your Homeschool Year on Autopilot this summer. Every summer, we have a bonus for autopilot purchasers. The fabulous thing about it is, once you purchase autopilot, you get the bonus every summer thereafter. So we have some people who have gotten some fabulous free bonuses from having purchased autopilot, but it’s a one time purchase. So the bonus period this year ends June 30, and that’s because we have a fabulous workshop managing multiple kids. So I’m having Heather Tully on today to talk about this workshop. She was actually on episode 64 of The Ten Minutes to a Better Homeschool podcast, where we talked about using a loop schedule to manage multiple kids. And we realized that Heather had so much to offer that we were going to bring her back for a two part workshop this summer all about how to get this done. So Put Your Home School Year on Autopilot will help you plan out your school year, but Heather’s workshop is going to help you manage to do the plan with multiple children, and we think it’s going to be fabulous. So we’re going to be talking about that in this episode of the podcast. We have a fun new kind of framework we’re going to share with you. And yeah, just listen in and tell us what you think.

Pam Barnhill [00:01:54]:

Heather Tully is a mom of ten who’s been homeschooling for over 19 years. As a documentary photographer, she seeks to capture the wonder in everyday life. You can find her online at heathertullyphotography.com where she shares her work and photos of her family from their Georgia home. And Heather is also the co author of the book Gather: Exploring the Wonder Wisdom, and Worship of Learning at Home. I hear you had a pretty great co author for that book, Heather.

Heather Tully [00:02:23]:

I did.

Pam Barnhill [00:02:26]:

Welcome to the podcast. Okay. In case you haven’t heard, Heather and I wrote that book together, and it was so much fun to get to work with you and your beautiful photography.

Heather Tully [00:02:36]:

Thanks. And meet all those families, right? It was awesome.

Pam Barnhill [00:02:39]:

Well, you got to meet all the families. I just got to meet your family. But so much fun. Okay, so today we are here talking about homeschooling multiple kids, which, if you’re having deja vu as a podcast listener, we actually had Heather on earlier in the spring to talk about homeschooling multiple kids. And from that, we kind of got this idea that we could help Moms with this a little bit more and decided we were going to do a special class this summer. Right?

Heather Tully [00:03:12]:

Yeah. I’m so excited for July.

Pam Barnhill [00:03:14]:

Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Lot of fun. Okay, so let’s talk about this idea, because I think this is a place where a lot of moms kind of get hung up. Now, some moms don’t because they’re just thrown into their very first homeschooling experience with homeschooling, multiple kids. I don’t think that makes it any less overwhelming, though. But can you remember back all those years ago when you started homeschooling? More than one?

Heather Tully [00:03:42]:

Yeah. So the first year when I had an official homeschooler, right, we’re all homeschoolers, so we start before they’re six. But that first year, I had a six year old and I had three toddlers, and I was expecting, so it was busy. So the third year of homeschooling, I started with two official students all the way. You fast forward, and this next year, I’ll have seven students that I’m home at one time.

Pam Barnhill [00:04:09]:

That just wears me out because I’ve never had more than three. Okay, so this is my last year with three right now because I’m graduating my first or actually, by the time this comes out, she will be graduated. It’s funny, though, because for me, my first two were 22 months apart, so it never felt like I mean, I know that there was a point in time where Olivia was doing things like reading and math, and John wasn’t, but he was just always kind of there along for the ride. So it always feels like I’ve been homeschooling more than one kid. I think my big thing, though, was bringing in number three when Thomas came in and kind of reached that age where he needed to be doing phonics and he needed to be doing math, and my other two were still such a young age that they were still needing a lot of help from me. And then there was the guilt, because Thomas didn’t get the same experience.

Heather Tully [00:05:13]:

Do you ever struggle with that is really a big struggle with multiple kids. I think for me, my breaking point was when we had high schoolers and knowing how to give them enough time while I still had littles. I mean, at that point, I still had kinder I still had those early years toddlers. So it’s tricky. Mom guilt is a big thing for any homeschoolers, but I think the bigger your family, the more students. It can be easy to feel like you’re not doing enough. You didn’t cover everything, so we’ll talk about that. That’s one of the things we want to talk about in our class, right?

Pam Barnhill [00:05:53]:

Yeah. I hadn’t even thought about that because mine did kind of move together. By the time I got ready for high schoolers, my youngest was old enough that he wasn’t taking as much of my time, though he still takes more of my time than anybody else does, I will say. So do you think that’s probably the biggest struggle is do you think it’s a bigger struggle when they’re little, or a bigger struggle as you get older kids.

Heather Tully [00:06:19]:

That’s hard. People ask me that all the time. Littles, I think, are more physically demanding. But those big kids take a lot of time. They still need you to check in on them. They’re doing more independently through the day, but they still need those points with mom. So I think every season is a struggle, and I think it’s learning to embrace that and realize it’s not always going to be perfect. I don’t think it ever is perfect. It’s perfect because it isn’t perfect. And learning to just embrace those different seasons. It’s constantly shifting as our children get older and you add in more students and some graduate. It would be so easy if it was always the same, wouldn’t it?

Pam Barnhill [00:07:04]:

Well, and that’s true, right? Because stuff that stays the same, you get used to doing. And you can just rinse and repeat and do over and over again. And so yeah, it’s kind of like when you get a set of meals or something that you like to cook, but then the season shifts and you want to make food for the hot or food for the cold. Yeah. So it’s constantly changing like everything else. Okay, so we have, though, come up with a method that we think is going to help moms, dads, any homeschoolers think through this and maybe shift some of their mindset a little bit. So we have a series of steps that we think would be good to follow. And what are we calling it?

Heather Tully [00:07:52]:

Calling it flock, which is because you mentioned when we were talking about this, like a mother duck with her little ducklings. And I was chuckling because I was picturing me trying to herd a bunch of cats.

Pam Barnhill [00:08:08]:

Cats do not come in a flock.

Heather Tully [00:08:10]:

Okay, we’re going to so I was laughing like, no, think ducks. Think, you know, following the line.

Pam Barnhill [00:08:19]:

Yeah. Have you seen the meme, though, with like, the ducks in the cop car? And it’s like my ducks are definitely not in a row or something like that. I don’t even know where my ducks are. Oh, I love it. Okay, so let’s talk about what flock stands for. So just very briefly, you want to give us a rundown?

Heather Tully [00:08:41]:

So F is fix your expectations. And I love that one. L is look for ways to simplify. O is organize your time and your energy. C is create helpful habits. And then K is keep records.

Pam Barnhill [00:08:58]:

Oh, keep records. That just sounds so daunting. Come on.

Heather Tully [00:09:04]:

And so this is really realistic because we’re moms with multiples, and we need to take kind of those hopes and those aspirations and make it practical. And so it’s very realistic and very simple.

Pam Barnhill [00:09:20]:

Right. And there’s a very important reason why we keep those records too. And it might not be the reason what you think it is. So you’re going to have to just come to the workshop and check it out. So let’s talk about how a little bit of the logistics about the workshop. We’re doing this in two parts, right?

Heather Tully [00:09:40]:

Correct. Yeah, two different sessions. Remind me of the date.

Pam Barnhill [00:09:44]:

July 7 is going to be the first one, and then July 20 is going to be the second one. And I think we broke it up into so many sessions because we really wanted to be able to give time for lots of Q and A.

Heather Tully [00:09:57]:

It’s always nice to be able to bounce ideas off of other mamas. So I want to have time to okay, we share this with you now. Let’s talk about it, right?

Pam Barnhill [00:10:08]:

And then implementation as well. So we’re going to have a workbook for you. The two parts to the workshop, lots of Q and A and how you get this. It is actually a free bonus this year with the purchase of Autopilot. Put your home school year on Autopilot, which is our planning course. Now, if you are listening to this and you bought Autopilot last year or the year before or five years ago, you get this bonus. Every bonus we release for Autopilot, if you purchased it in the past, you always get the bonus. If you haven’t purchased Autopilot, you’re definitely going to want to do that before June 30 because that is the end of our bonus period this year. So after June 30, the bonus period will be over and we’ll be getting ready and gearing up, getting everybody into that first workshop on July 7. And, yes, there will be recordings. We will record the workshop, and you’ll have the opportunity to download and keep those recordings as well. So, Heather, you have used the Autopilot method of planning in the form of plan your year to do your planning in the past. Yes.

Heather Tully [00:11:17]:

Yeah, I have. So I’ll be talking about that and sharing kind of how I adapted it for multiple kids, how to take from high schooler down next year. I’ll have a first grader, but before then, I had high schooler to kinder.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:32]:

Okay. Yeah. So this is going to dovetail very nicely with everything that we talk about in Autopilot. And as Heather and I were chatting about this course and the outline of the workshop and everything, we talked about the fact that autopilot is the perfect way to create the plan for the year.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:50]:

In flock.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:51]:

We’re going to be talking a little bit about the planning, but we’re really going to move into the execution and how you take the plan that you’ve created in your head. And this is why we’re starting with expectations and you actually make it work when you are homeschooling 2347 children all at one time.

Heather Tully [00:12:14]:

Yeah. I really want to give the mamas a hope, inspire them. You can do this, and you can. I mean, you do it, I do it. There’s so many moms out there who are homeschooling multiple children. And so we want to encourage you and how to take that grand plan you spent a lot of time making, which is an important first step. But then what does the day to day look like?

Pam Barnhill [00:12:39]:

I love it. I love it so much. Okay, this is going to be great. And I just realized that we have autopilot and now we have flock, which is about birds. So we’re still talking about flying in your home school that’s ready to fly. I love it. Okay, so if you want to get autopilot, put your home school year on autopilot with the flock bonus for this year, the Teaching Multiple Kids bonus, then come on over to Pambarnhill.com Autopilot and you can get right in.

Heather Tully [00:13:11]:

Great.

Pam Barnhill [00:13:16]:

And there you have it. Now, if you want to join us for the free bonus Managing Multiple Kids workshop and find out more about that flock framework, you can come on over to Pambarnhill.com Autopilot, pick up the Put Your Homeschool Year on Autopilot planning course. You will not be sorry that you did. And then you’ll get to join us for the workshop as long as you purchase by June 30. And we’ll also have links and resources to the other podcasts that we did this year on Managing Multiple kids. So you can go have a listen to those. And happy planning, guys. I think that planning season is one of the best seasons of the year. Everything is bright, shiny, and new, and I just love to get my homeschool plans together. So we’ll be back again in a couple of weeks with another of our Planning Mom series. Until then, keep on home. Bully.