Have you ever longed for your children to be best friends? I know I have.

One of the perks of homeschooling is the abundance of time together as a family. We aren’t just ships passing in the night; we live, breathe, and work side-by-side. As with all relationships, closeness comes through spending time with each other. The quantity of time brings about the quality of the relationship. Day by day, precious sibling bonds grow into deep friendships. If older sister sees younger brother struggling with math and she absolutely loves the subject, she has an opportunity to share her gift in a tender moment of helpfulness. Granted, so much time can also be fertile ground for sibling squabbles, but that provides opportunity for character training, as well. It’s always easier to snap at someone we love and trust, because we trust that they will still love us after the fact.

It’s always easier to snap at someone we love and trust, because we trust that they will still love us after the fact. Click To Tweet

I worry kids today don’t always have the opportunities to be helpful towards the young or elderly anymore. They can stay so busy with sports and electronics there isn’t time for much else. When they do get together, society tends to box them up into neat little segregated packages. If we only allow them to interact with people of the same age, are we really socializing them? It’s not just schools that do this, but churches as well. In Titus 2:4 the Bible instructs the older women to teach the younger. As a whole, we no longer follow this instruction, and society suffers as a result.

Wisdom comes from learning through life experiences, good or bad. History teaches us we can learn from each other’s mistakes and achievements. Take science, for example. We could never progress without first studying and building on the work of the great scientists before us. Where would we be without Democritus, Aristotle, Archimedes, or Ptolemy, to name a few? Likewise, families used to live life together. They were close; they gleaned the wisdom of previous generations. Often grandparents even lived in the same household, and still do, in many other cultures.

The way God created us to be was family first and classroom second. Click To Tweet

Since we as homeschoolers do happen to have an abundance of time together, why segregate our homes into grades? One-room schoolhouses taught multiple grades simultaneously, and so can we. It will save you time and energy, something every homeschool mama longs to accomplish. It can also save you money on curriculum. One science program opposed to four different ones is a huge savings.

While it’s true your seventh grader won’t always be studying the same thing as your kindergartener, you can tie so many things together, even as you tailor subjects to your kids’ learning levels: science, history, Bible, foreign language studies, geography, reading out loud, to name a few. Older kids can help with the oral reading, while the younger siblings learn to sit still. Science experiments can be done as a group with individual results recorded in separate notebooks. Everyone enjoys looking at things in the microscope! Older children may perform the experiments, but the younger ones will enjoy watching, and you’d be surprised how much they will pick up. Let the younger ones do a Charlotte Mason type approach and narrate what they’ve learned, rather than doing the tedious task of writing all the time. Older children can read extra living history books and give an oral report as your family gathers to listen. The additional oratorical practice is just a bonus.

As your older children participate in activities with younger siblings, they naturally glean responsibility and learn leadership skills. Teach your children to look for and recognize the accomplishments and achievements of their siblings and compliment them. It’s hard to fight with a brother or sister that has just been admiring you. Let the natural course of family life develop life skills. When mom is sick or exhausted, the older children have opportunities to step up and change a diaper, fix a meal, or comfort a whining toddler.

Life is so much more than a textbook. Education should be, too. Step out of normalcy and create your own normal, a better normal. The way God created us to be was family first and classroom second. For some entertaining ways to teach as a family, check out my previous post on educational play.