Do your younger ones let you spend time 'teaching' the older one?

[Elf]

Some of us have posted before about how to HE when you have really little ones as well. Well, we are now about three months into the home education thing and I just say thank God for Steiner and his 'don't do anything formal until they are 6 or 7 years old' because I just don't seem to be able to!

DD1 is 5 and so I don't want to do a lot with her but sometimes she wants to do a bit of writing or something and I would love to sit with her and really 'be' there for her ie with full concentration but with DS being a very active 2 year old and DD2 being a very active and climbing 1 year old I find it quite stressful and don't really try much as I find it frustrating.

She is learning so much I feel from being with me at home generally I feel fine about that, I am just talking about doing just a little bit of writing or reading.

So I just wondered rather than just generally, but really at nitty gritty level how some of you do it. I can imagine overseeing some reading or writing while breastfeeding for instance but as I said, with a 2 and 1 year old I feel quite flummoxed. Will I have to wait until DD2 is 3 or 4!?

Your thoughts greatly appreciated.

[SueBaroo]

I have three of similar ages to yours. I'm very laid-back at the moment, and often, because DD2 loves to copy her 5 year old big sister, she will sit next to her do some colouring or something while DD1 does a phonics worksheet or something.
Most of the time, they all play together, and often creatively use what they've been learning anyway, so they'll be writing little shopping lists and so on.
I tend to operate on the little and often principles with the formal stuff - a worksheet here, some timetables there and so on. It works with our circumstances at the moment, but we will begin to formalize things a little bit more as they get older.

So, I suppose my advice is to relax, really.

[Elf]

Thanks for replying SueBaroo. Yes, little and often sounds good. It's good to know there are others out there. Times table at five years old, that sounds advanced!

[SueBaroo]

Oh, she's just memorizing the 2 times table, nothing fancy.