It's a terribly difficult situation that so many have been put into. It's showing at a larger scale what has been an issue for parents who've ended up with no suitable school places or having to pull their child out because of issues at the school.
Unless the school is expecting any of them to be available for live lessons, I'd condense down 'learning' to a few hours in the mornings, combine as much as possible, and then whatever you need to get through the day after that. That's how I home educated 4 children, 2 with additional needs, and worked through a crisis time.
Seriously? This isn't anything to do with their gender. Probably their age but not because they're boys.
Age, individual personality, and habits is my thinking, though gender/gendered socialization can play into the latter two. My DD1, even with her years of experience, struggled to get back into home-based learning compared to her older brother who is part-time student and her younger brother who was already full-time home educated when first lockdown hit.
It was no longer her habit so it took a few weeks to get her stop messing around in the morning, to stop finding excuses to put off work, while her then-8 year old brother would come down, have his breakfast, and get started on his maths start without me having to say a word or be around - which is what she did when she was his age, because that's our habit for primary. Part of the issue is that it's back and forth, building a learning habit at home takes time just as children have to get into the habits at school and often have to readjust to them after breaks.
With her, I created a tickbox - each of her subjects in a list, how many times she had to do it a week, and when we divided it all up, it was 4 subjects a day, plus PE & Maths. We added in her Piano and drawing with the Drawing Textbook so she'd have enough non-computer based stuff to do while the others worked. She could pick which subjects as long as she showed me when she finished.
With her older brother's additional needs, he and I create a weekly to-do list with daily tasks and a time block - he has 8:30-12:30 for his learning work block when he's home, he needs to get it all done in that time to get the 'afternoon chill' as he puts it. It's taught him to get things done.
With my KS2 child, and what I did a lot when my children were younger, is when we need to change his routine, I get a whiteboard out and make a list. We talk it through. It's messy for a bit. I don't expect him to work past lunch time unless he's really messed around, like his older brother, he's done by 12:30 - with practice, I've learned not to over do it: four topics plus assigned reading daily and that's it.
I do a chunk of my work before the first maths check (he does maths first, the first part on his own), I work through his 20 minute Pobble writing time, and I work after, and I keep myself to other things through timers. We have so many timers in this house.
I meant a dream from a parent home schooling point of view, not a social point of view
Having gone from four at home to days where I have one & everything inbetween, there are pros and cons to all of them. Obviously when it's just my youngest, I can give him more attention, but when his siblings are home, they can explain things in different ways that can help each other understand, we can do group projects together that are a bit harder if it's just him, we had a lot of fun when they were all primary age doing singing or other activities together or the younger ones who usually finish sooner can go play together while the older ones are still working - the excitement of being done and allowed to escape (because all when younger had a bad habit of finishing one thing and then running off, they're not allowed to leave the room until done except the bathroom. My oldest is the only exception now that he's using a Pomodoro timer). Sadly, the latter won't be a thing in January as my DDs' school is planning live lessons which is going to throw us off (and not sure if we've got the devices for it, they've got a testing session on the Monday and all of us are dreading it).