Homeschooling multiples

I am so glad to see this subgroup! I am in the very early stages of researching homeschooling for my kids. They will be turning 4 in October and they are currently going to preschool three days a week. I'm happy with the preschool and they enjoy it. The main reason I'm thinking about homeschooling is that they will miss the cutoff for kindergarten by a few weeks in 2009. So my thought is to homeschool for the year before kindergarten and essentially see how it goes. I have all the usual questions and concerns that it seems everyone has before starting to homeschool, but I'm turning to all of you because I feel like there may be some unique issues with homeschooling multples:

1) Do you worry that they spend too much time with each other? I know we will be socializing still, but I wonder if they will always lean toward hanging out together?

2) Individual attention-does anyone have issues giving them individual attention. I already feel like that is a challenge around here. I'll sit down with one to work on something and the other one (despite having their own activity going) wants to be involved too. Its particularly a struggle here because my daughter is weaker with letters and numbers and when I sit down to work with her my son comes to see what we are doing and answers questions and kind of takes over.

Anyways, I would love to hear from other parents about any unique issues with homeschooling twins.

Meghan

 

As I haven't begun to HS my twins, I am interested in these answers as well. Though at the moment, I am not sure we have more then one or two who are already HSing their twins. Perhaps this will be an educational journey for us all.

 

QUOTE(MeghanM @ Sep 1 2008, 01:24 PM) [snapback]957386[/snapback]
I am so glad to see this subgroup! I am in the very early stages of researching homeschooling for my kids. They will be turning 4 in October and they are currently going to preschool three days a week. I'm happy with the preschool and they enjoy it. The main reason I'm thinking about homeschooling is that they will miss the cutoff for kindergarten by a few weeks in 2009. So my thought is to homeschool for the year before kindergarten and essentially see how it goes. I have all the usual questions and concerns that it seems everyone has before starting to homeschool, but I'm turning to all of you because I feel like there may be some unique issues with homeschooling multples:

1) Do you worry that they spend too much time with each other? I know we will be socializing still, but I wonder if they will always lean toward hanging out together?

2) Individual attention-does anyone have issues giving them individual attention. I already feel like that is a challenge around here. I'll sit down with one to work on something and the other one (despite having their own activity going) wants to be involved too. Its particularly a struggle here because my daughter is weaker with letters and numbers and when I sit down to work with her my son comes to see what we are doing and answers questions and kind of takes over.

Anyways, I would love to hear from other parents about any unique issues with homeschooling twins.

Meghan


Honestly I think most twins by nature like to hang out with each other. I don't really see how having a built in friend is a bad thing. They will eventually learn how to make friends with other kids, but I actually like that they don't have to go further than down the hall to find a playmate (well most of the time, currently we are in the fighting every few minute stage).

I have no idea how to handle the individual attention issue. I have the same problem here. Nathan is stronger than William in a lot of ways both physically and academically and tends to take over situations. I have the fun of adding a 2yr that also wants to be in the mix of things and it makes it extra hard. I keep hoping as they get a little older that I will be able to convince one to play with the 2yr while I work with the other, but so far it is a no go.

I think it is great that you are going to give this a go. I already homeschool my DD, but my twins are in the "we will try it for a year" phase of life. I intend to hold them out their official K year and see what happens. I figure if nothing else they will just go into K the following year a little older.