Homeschool Planning for Your First Child vs. Homeschool Planning for Your Second Child

Homeschooling multiple children is a juggling act. Never is this more apparent than when it’s time to do homeschool planning.

When I was expecting my first child, I frequented one of those internet forums for moms who are due around the same time. Without fail, I noted that second-time moms always seemed to wish they had done things an opposite way with their first child. However, they all seemed to disagree about what they wish they’d done differently. I felt disconcerted. How was I supposed to succeed at this?

I have six years of parenting under my belt now, and I’m starting to understand why people tend to make swings between kids. Every child is a unique individual for one thing, and for another, the second child has a different life experience. 

When I was in college, I took a developmental psychology course. We discussed twin studies and sibling studies. Any given set of siblings has shared environmental factors and non-shared environmental factors. I’ve made peace with the reality that my three children aren’t going to have identical lives, and that’s okay. 

My first foray into homeschooling my son happened in 2020, when I decided to keep him home for his K4 year. Now I’m preparing for my second son’s K4 year. 

To illustrate my point, I’m going to share with you what a day in my first son’s K4 year looked like:

• “Little Tommy Tucker” nursery rhyme
• “The Ugly Duckling” from Classic Fairy Tales
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Seven Silly Eaters
• Genesis 27
• Jacob and Esau – The Beginners Bible
• “Rain” by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Christian Liberty Nature Reader – chapter about ants
• “Love Between Brothers and Sisters” by Isaac Watts
• Hero Tales – Adoniram Judson introduction
• Abeka handwriting worksheet
• Craft – gluing bits of construction paper
• Water Wow
• Practiced tracing with dry erase markers 
• Saxon K lesson
• Review letter sounds 
• Write name
• Work on Cubbies verse

And now I’m going to share with you what a day in my second son’s K4 year is probably going to look like:

• Saxon K lesson
• Handwriting worksheet
• Work on letter sounds
• Listen to one picture book read aloud 
• Write name 
• Work on Cubbies verse
• Tag along with big brother as desired 

And…that’s it. The two plans are different, very different. But the situations are different too. When my oldest was in K4, we had literally nothing but time. We went nowhere and we did nothing, so why not spend 2 hours on fun educational activities? It was a better use of time than wallowing in sorrow. Homeschooling multiple children means that I now have less time to spend per child.

Saxon Math K, Home Study Teacher’s Edition

Furthermore, I think we have a tendency to overplan the first child. I would contend that that’s actually a good thing. With the first child, you’re still developing your family culture. We were just beginning to listen to classical music together and to do school work at home at all! My second son is going into K4 already knowing all of the orchestra instruments by sight, and many of them by sound as well. Why? Because he’s with his brother all the time, and his brother learned those things a couple years ago. This is a great perk of homeschooling multiple children – they learn things from each other, even if you don’t plan it that way.

I’m also more used to being a homeschool mother. I used to write down things like playing with the Water Wow books and using dry erase markers, but now those things are an organic part of our day. There’s no shame in needing to give yourself that structure at the beginning. When I was in that season, I was also caring for an infant and a toddler and supporting my husband through the illness and eventual passing of his father. If it wasn’t written down, I wasn’t going to remember. 

My second son is going to have natural exposure to quality children’s literature, classical music, great paintings, history, and science by virtue of being around my first son’s studies. For my first son to get any of those things, I had to be direct and intentional. 

All three of my children are precious to me. God placed them in their birth order on purpose, and I trust that He’ll fill in the cracks in my efforts.